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BANCROFT'S   HISTORY 


OF    THE 


UNITED     STATES     OF    AMERICA. 


CENTENARY  EDITION, 


Vol.  II. 


s/ 


HISTORY 


OF    THE 


UNITED   STATES  OF  AMERICA, 

FROM 

THE    DISCOVERY    OF    THE    CONTINENT. 
BY 

/    GEORGE    BANCROFT. 


IN  SIX  VOLUMES. 
Vol.  XL 


THOROUGHLY    REVISED    EDITION. 


BOSTON: 

LITTLE,   BROWN,  AND  COMPANY. 

1876. 


copyuight,  1876, 
By    George    Bancroft. 


CAMBRIDGE  : 
PRESS    OF    JOHN    WILSON    AND    SON. 


CONTENTS   OF  VOLUME  H. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

MARYLAND. 

Maryland,  p.  3  —  Death  of  Lord  Baltimore,  5  —  "  Baconists  "  in  Mary- 
land, 7  —  Restrictions  on  Suffrage,  7  —  Protestantism,  8  —  A  Tory  President, 
9  —  Revolution,  10  —  Culpepper  in  Virginia,  10  —  Increase  of  Royal  Power,  11 

—  Appeals  to  the  Assembly  prohibited,  12 — ^Virginia  redeemed,  13  —  Howard  of 
Effingham,  13  —  Rebels  sent  to  Virginia,  13  —  Kidnapped  Men  and  Boys,  14  — 
Despotism,  15  —  Resisted,  16  —  Tendencies  to  Union,  17. 

CHAPTER  XXII. 

NEW  NETHERLAND. 

Holland  and  Union,  p.  18  —  Revolution  in  the  Netherlands,  19 — Holland,  20 

—  Zealand,  20  —  Origin  of  the  Dutch  West  India  Company,  23  —  Henry  Hud- 
son, 25 — Sails  up  the  North  River,  27 — The  Uncultivated  Wilderness,  29  — 
Geographical  Features,  30  —  Progress,  30 — Hudson's  Last  Voyage,  32  —  The 
Dutch  Traffic  on  the  North  River,  33  —  Albany,  35  —  Olden  Bameveldt  and 
Grotius  oppose  Colonization  in  America,  36  —  West  India  Company  chartered, 
37  —  Colonization,  37  —  Colonial  Diplomacy,  38  —  Charter  of  Liberties,  40  — 
Monopoly  of  Lands,  43  -De  Vries  plants  Delaware,  44  —  Dutch  Fort  at  Hart- 
ford, 45  —  Gustavus  Adolphus  and  New  Sweden,  46  — Dutch  and  Indian  Wars, 
49  —  Municipal  Liberties  desired,  53  —  Roger  Williams  mediates  a  Truce,  54  — 
Peace,  54 — New  Albion,  55  —  Stuyvesant's  Administration,  56 — New  Swe- 
den, 56  — Amsterdam  purchases  Delaware,  56 — Emigrants,  57  —  Jews,  58  — 
Waldenses,  59  —  Huguenots,  59  —  Africans,  60  —  Dawn  of  Democratic  Liberty, 
61  —  Effects  of  the  Restoration  of  Charles  II.,  64  —  Conquest  of  New  Nether- 
land,  68 — New  Jersey,  70  —  Delaware,  73  —  New  York,  74  —  New  York  recon- 
quered, 75  —  Restored,  75  —  Rights  of  Neutral  Flags,  77. 

CHAPTER    XXin. 

THE  PEOPLE  CALLED  QUAKERS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATBS. 

Unity  of  the  Human  Race,  p.  78  —  Progress  of  Emancipation,  78  —  Power  of 
the  People  in  England,  80  —  Progress  of  Intellectual  Freedom,  80  —  Speculative 
Truth,  81  — Quakers,  81  — George  Fox,  81  — Struggle  for  Freedom  of  Mind,  83 

—  Obtains  it,  84  —  Preaches  Freedom  to  the  People,  84  —  His  Purpose,  86  — 
The  Inner  Light,  87  — Its  Reality,  87— Quaker  Method,  the  Method  of  Des- 


207722 


VI  CONTENTS. 

cartes,  87 — Asserts  Freedom  of  Conscience,  and  of  Mind,  88  —  Repels  Super- 
stition, 89  —  Respects  Universal  and  Necessary  Truths,  90  —  The  Bible,  90  — 
Christianity,  91  —  Philosophy,  92  — Quaker  Morality,  92  — Vows,  93— Power, 

93  —  Riches,  93  —  Education,  93  —  Capital  Punishment,  94  —  Imprisonment  for 
Debt,  94  — War,  94  — Common  Prayer,  94  —  The  Sacraments,  94 — Mourning, 

94  — Oaths,  94  — Sensual  Pleasures,  94  — Dress,  95  — Style,  95  —  Tracts,  95 — 
Hireling  Ministry,  95  —  Persecution,  95  —  Resistance,  96  —  Quaker  Method  of 
Revolution,  96  —  Power  of  Truth,  97  —  Faith  in  Humanity,  97  — Universal 
Enfranchisement,  98  — Priesthood,  99  — Woman,  99— Kings,  99— Nobles,  99 
Titles,  99— Hat  Worship,  100  — Influence  of  the  Age  on  Fox,  100  — Progress 
of  his  Opinions,  100  — Quakers  persecuted,  101  — They  buy  West  New  Jersey, 
102  — The  Concessions,  102  — The  Quaker  Constitution,  102  —  Relations  with 
the  Indians,  103  — With  the  Duke  of  York,  103  — Progress  of  the  Settlement, 
105. 

CHAPTER    XXIV. 

PENNSYLVANIA. 

William  Penn,  p.  107— Pennsylvania,  107  —  Letter  to  the  People,  108  — 
Monopoly,  109  —  Government,  111  —  Free  Society,  111  —  Delaware,  111  —  Sails 
for  America,  112  —  Life  of  Penn,  112 — John  Locke  and  Penn,  119  —  Penn  on 
the  Delaware,  121  —  The  Great  Treaty  with  the  Indians,  122  —  Organization  of 
the  Government,  124  —  Penn  and  Baltimore,  125  —  Philadelphia,  125  —  Consti- 
tutions established,  126  —  Trial  for  Witchcraft,  128  —  Progress,  128 — Penn's 
Farewell,  130  —  Boundary  with  Maryland,  130  —  Penn  in  England,  131  —  His 
Fame,  131  —  His  Fortunes,  133  —  Quaker  Legislation,  134 — Indian  Alarm,  135 
—  Slavery,  135  — Death  of  George  Fox,  136. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

JAMES  n.    CONSOLIDATES   THE   NORTHERN  COLONIES. 

_,^^Andros  in  New  York,  p.  137  —  Claims  Connecticut,  137  —  Character  of  James 
IL,  138  — His  Colonial  Policy,  139— New  York  discontented,  140— East  New 
Jersey,  141  —  Cause  of  the  Emigration  of  Scottish  Presbyterians,  142 — No 
Persecution  in  New  Jersey,  144  —  Free  Trade  in  New  York,  145  —  Charter  of 
Liberties,  146  —  The  Five  Nations,  146  —  Their  Wars  with  other  Tribes,  147  — 
With  the  French,  148  —  Treaty  at  Albany,  150  -War  with  the  French,  152  — 
Policy  of  Louis  XIV.,  153  —  Magnanimity  of  the  Onondagas,  153 — War  re- 
vived, 154  —  Treaty  for  New  England,  154  —  Dudley,  Aadros,  154  —  Tyranny, 
156 — John  Wise  resists,  156  —  Connecticut,  158  —  Rhode  Island,  159  —  Con- 
solidation, 160. 

CHAPTER  XXVI.  , 

THE  REVOLUTION  OF  1688. 

England,  Clarendon's  Ministry,  p.  161  —  The  Cabal,  162  —  Shaftesbury,  162  — 
Danby,  163  —  Shaftesbury,  164  —  Reaction,  165  — James  IL,  165—  Baxter,  167 


CONTENTS.  "VU 

—  The  Tories,  the  Whigs,  168  — Penn's  Party,  169— The  Revolution  of  1688, 
170  —  Revolution  in  Massachusetts,  171  —  Plymouth,  172— Rhode  Island,  173 

—  Connecticut,  New  York,  173  —  Absolute  Sovereignty  of  Parliament,  174. 

CHAPTER  XXVII. 

THE  BESULT  THUS  FAR. 

Population  of  the  Twelve  Oldest  States  in  1688,  p.  175  —Elements  of  the  Coun- 
try, 175 — A  Free  People,  175  —  An  Anglo-Saxon  People,  176  —  Character  of 
the  Virginians,  176  —  A  Christian  People,  177  —  A  Protestant  People,  177  — 
Political  Character  of  Protestantism,  177  —  Christianity  originally  an  Enfran- 
chisement, 177  —  Origin  of  the  Political  Influence  of  the  Seven  Sacraments,  178 

—  The  Exclusive  Sacraments  found  a  Spiritual  Tyranny,  178  —  Imperfect  Re- 
sistance from  Scholastic  Theologians ;  from  Sensualists ;  from  the  Feudal  Aris- 
tocracy; from  Monarchs  ;  from  Scholars,  179  —  Wy cliff e  appeals  to  the  People, 
179  —  John  Huss,  179  —  Luther  and  Lutheranism,  180  —  Anabaptists,  181  —  Cal- 
vin, 182 — -Political  Mission  of  Calvinism,  183  —  Calvinism  revolutionized  the 
English  World,  183  —  Calvinism  and  Massachusetts,  183  —  Progress  in  New- 
England,  184  —  Connecticut,  184— Rhode  Island,  184  — The  Quakers,  185  — 
Coincidence  of  Quakers  and  Descartes,  185  —  America  struggles  for  Universal- 
ity, 185  —  Influence  on  the  Red  Man,  185  —  On  the  Black  Man,  185  —  France, 
England,  and  the  Rising  Colonies,  186. 

CHAPTER    XXVni. 

THE   SOUTHERN  STATES  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION. 

The  Fortunes  of  the  Stuarts,  p.  188  —  The  Aristocratic  Revolution  of  Eng- 
land, 188  — Character  of  William  of  Orange,  189  — Sketch  of  Somers,  190  — 
The  Revolution  vindicates  English  Liberties,  190  —  The  Anglican  Church,  190  — 
Right  of  Resistance,  192  —  Power  of  Parliament,  192  —  Influence  of  the  Com- 
mercial Classes,  193  —  Theory  of  the  Revolution,  194  —  Power  of  Opinion,  194 

—  Free  Press,  195  — Character  of  the  Revolution,  195  —  Parties  in  South  Caro- 
lina, 196  —  Abrogation  of  Locke's  Constitution,  198  —  Archdale,  198  —  Prog- 
ress ;  Huguenots  enfranchised,  199  —  High  Church  Faction,  200  —  Produce  of 
Carolina,  201  — North  Carolina,  202  — Its  Anarchy,  203  —  Progress,  203  — 
Virginia,  205  — Forms  of  Government,  206  —  The  Church,  207  —  Character  of 
its  People,  208  —  Maryland,  210  — The  Protestant  Association,  210  — Legisla- 
tion, 211  —  Power  of  Proprietary  restored,  211. 

CHAPTER  XXIX. 

THE  MIDDLE  STATES  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION. 

Pennsylvania,  p.  214 — Delaware,  214  —  George  Keith's  Schism,  215  — 
Fletcher  claims  the  Government,  216  —  Penn  restored,  219 — Negroes,  219  — 
New  Constitution,  220  —  New  Jersey,  223  —  It  becomes  a  Royal  Province,  225 
—New  York,  226  — Leisler,  237  —  Sloughter  arrives,  228  — Leisler  and  Mil- 


Viil  CONTENTS. 

borne  executed,  230  — Colonial  Liberties  asserted,  231 — Established  Churcli, 
232  —  Bellomont,  233  —  Sketch  of  Lord  Cornbury,  234  —  His  Administration, 
235  —  Lovelace,  Hunter,  237. 

CHAPTER   XXX. 

NEW  ENGLAND  AFTER  THE  BEVOLUTION. 

Connecticut,  p.  242  —  Commands  its  own  Militia,  243  —  Rhode  Island,  244  — 
Charters  endangered,  244  —  Massachusetts,  245  —  Revolution  in  Opinion,  247  — 
Belief  in  Witchcraft,  247  — Cotton  Mather,  248  — Glover,  the  Witch,  249  — 
Skepticism,  250  —  Cotton  Mather,  the  Champion  of  Witchcraft,  250  —  New- 
Charter,  252  —  New  Hampshire  a  Royal  Province,  254  —  Phips  and  Stough- 
ton,  255  — Witchcraft  at  Salem,  256  — The  New  Charter  arrives,  258  — The 
Hanging  of  Witches  begins,  259  —  More  Victims,  261  —  Confessions,  262  — 
Willard,  Burroughs,  Proctor,  262  —  Currier,  Jacobs,  263  —  Last  Executions,  264 

—  Cotton  Mather' s  ' '  Wonders  of  the  Invisible  World, ' '  265  —  Meeting  of  General 
Court,  266  — The  Delusion  over,  267  — Moral  Revolution,  269— Dudley,  270. 

CHAPTER    XXXI. 

THE  RULE  OF  PARLIAMENT  AND  THE  COLONIES. 

The  Principles  of  the  Revolution  applied  by  the  Colonies  to  their  own  Condi- 
tion, p.  271  —  The  Anglican  Church  in  England  and  Ireland,  272  —  King  Wil- 
liam desires  Union,  273  —  System  of  James  II.,  273  —  The  System  of  Governing 
by  Instructions,  274  —  Appointment  of  the  Board  of  Trade,  275 — Its  Plan  of 
Union,  276  —  The  Constitution  proposed  by  Penn,  277  —  Parliament  and  Taxa- 
tion, 278  — The  Prerogative  and  the  Veto,  278  — The  Judiciary,  279  — Writ  of 
Habeas  Corpus,  279  — The  Press,  279  —  The  Church,  279  — The  Slave-Trade, 
280  —  The  Charter  Governments  threatened,  280  —  The  Mercantile  System  sus- 
tained and  developed,  282  —  Courts  of  Admiralty,  283  —  Laws  against  Manufac- 
tures in  the  Colonies,  284  —  Opposition  to  the  Mercantile  System,  285  —  Piracy, 
286  —  Regulation  of  Colonial  Currency,  286— American  Post-Office,  287  — 
Naval  Stores  and  the  Navy,  287  —  As  yet  no  Taxation  by  Parliament,  288  — 
Tendencies  to  Independence,  288. 

CHAPTER    XXXn. 

PROGRESS  OF  FRANCE  IN  NORTH  AMERICA. 

European  Colonial  System,  p.  290  —  Mercantile  System,  291  —  Its  Develop- 
ments, 291  — The  System  of  Portugal,  293  — Spain,  Holland,  294  — France  and 
England,  294  — New  France,  298  — The  Hundred  Associates,  298— Jesuits,  298 

—  Jesuits  in  Canada,  299  —  Character  of  Brebeuf,  301  — Mode  of  Life,  302  — 
Hospital,  303  —  Ursuline  Convent,  Montreal,  304  —  Progress  of  Missions,  304  — 
Raymbault  and  Jogues  at  the  Falls  of  the  St.  Mary,  306  —  Jogues  in  Western 
New  York,  308  —  Bressani,  310  —  Mission  on  the  Kennebec,  311  —  Martyrdom 
of  Jogues,  312  —  Of  Daniel,  313  —  Of  Brebeuf  and  Lallemand,  314  —  Missions  to 
the  Five  Nations,  315  —  Dablon,  317  —  Rend  Mesnard,  Chaumonot,  318. 


CONTENTS.  IX 

CHAPTER  XXXin. 

FRANCE  AND   THE   VALLEY  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI. 

The  Ottawas,  p.  320  — Missions  to  the  Far  West;  Gareau,  320  — Ren^Mes- 
nard,  321  — Alloiiez,  323  — Dablon  and  Marquette,  325  — Congress  at  St. 
Mary's,  326  —  Jesuits  in  Michigan,  Wisconsin,  Nortliern  Illinois,  327 — Joliet, 
328  —  Marquette  and  Joliet  discover  the  Mississippi,  328  —  Death  of  Marquette, 
333  — La  Salle  at  Frontenac,  333  — On  Lake  Erie,  335  — On  the  Miami,  335  — 
Walks  to  Fort  Frontenac,  336  —  Hennepin's  Discoveries,  337  —  Tonti,  337 — La 
Salle  descends  the  Mississippi,  338  —  Colony  for  Louisiana,  338  —  La  Salle  in 
Texas,  339  —  Texas  a  Part  of  Louisiana,  340  —  La  Salle  departs  for  Canada,  341 

—  Is  murdered,  342  —  Fate  of  his  Companions,  343. 

CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

FRANCE   CONTENDS   FOR  THE   FISHERIES  AND  THE   GREAT   WEST. 

American  Possessions  of  France,  p.  344  —  Alliances;  Objects  of  the  War, 
345  —  Relative  Strength  of  French  and  English  Colonies,  345  —  Plans  of  Hostil- 
ity, 347  — Sack  of  Montreal;  War  in  Hudson's  Bay,  347  — Cocheco,  348  — 
Pemaquid,  349  —  Schenectady,  349  —  Salmon  Falls,  350  — An  American  Con- 
gress, 350  —  Conquest  of  Acadia,  351  —  Expedition  against  Quebec,  351  —  War 
on  the  Eastern  Frontier,  353  —  Hannah  Dustin,  354  —  War  of  the  French  with 
the  Five  Nations,  355 — Financial  Measures,  357  —  Peace  of  Ryswick,  357  — 
Boundaries,  358  —  Detroit  founded,  359  —  Illinois  colonized,  360  —  Character  of 
D'Iberville,  363  —  Colonization  of  Louisiana,  365  —  Collision  with  England  on 
the  Mississippi,  365 — Exploring  Expeditions,  367  —  Settlement  on  the  Mobile, 
367. 

CHAPTER  XXXV. 

WAR  OF  THE   SPANISH   SUCCESSION. 

War  of  the  Spanish  Succession,  p.  369  —  Expedition  of  South  Carolina  against 
St.  Augustine,  371  —  War  with  the  Spanish  Indians,  372  —  Attack  on  Charles- 
ton, 372  —  War  with  the  Abenakis,  373 — Burning  of  Deerfield,  374  —  Mas- 
sacre at  Haverhill,   376  —  Bounty  on  Scalps,  377  —  Conquest  of  Acadia,  378 

—  Character  of  Bolingbroke,  379  —  Plan  for  conquering  Canada,  380  —  Sir 
Hovenden  Walker  and  General  Hill,  380  —  Detroit  besieged,  383  —  France 
desires  Peace,  386  —  Peace  of  Utrecht,  387  —  Balance  of  Power,  387  —  Spain, 
Belgium,  388  — Free  Ships,  Free  Goods,  390  — The  Assiento,  390  — British 
Slave-Trade,  390  —  Surrender  of  Territory  to  England,  392. 

CHAPTER    XXXVI. 

THE   ABORIGINES   EAST  OF   THE   MISSISSIPPI.      THEIR  LANGUAGES. 

Cape  Breton,  p.  393  —  Languages  of  the  Aborigines,  394  —  The  Algon- 
kin;  Micmacs,   Etchemins,    395  —  Abenakis,   395  —  Pokanokets,   396 — Lenni- 


X  CONTENTS. 

Lenape,  Nanticokes,  Corees,  396  —  Powhatan  Confederacy,  Shawnees,  Miamis, 
397  —  Illinois,  398  — Chippewas,  Ottawas,  Menomonies,  398  — Sacs  and  Foxes, 
399  —  The  Dakota ;  Sioux,  Winnebagoes,  399  —  Huron-Iroquois  ;  Wyandots, 
Iroquois,  400  —  Tuscaroras,  401  — The  Catawba;  Woccons,  401  — The  Cher- 
okee, 402— The  Uchee,  403  — The  Natchez,  403  — The  MoUlian;  Chickasaws, 
404 — Choctaws,  Muskohgees,  405  —  Numbers,  406  —  Character  of  their  Lan- 
guage, 408  —  Its  Letters,  its  Hieroglyphics,  409  —  Its  Poverty  of  Abstract 
Terms,  410  —  Its  Synthetic  Character,  410  —  Inferences,  415. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII. 

THEIR  MANNERS,    POLITY,   AND   RELIGION. 

Manners  of  the  Aborigines,  p.  418  —  Dwellings,  418  —  Marriage,  419  — 
The  Mother  and  Child,  419  —  Education,  420  —  Condition  of  Woman,  421  — 
Resources,  422  —  Hospitality,  423  —  Famine,  424  —  Treatment  of  the  Sick,  the 
Aged,  424  —  Dress,  424  —  Political  Institutions,  425  —  Absence  of  Law,  426 

—  Retaliation,  426  — The  Tribe,  427  — Its  Chiefs,  427  — Its  Councils,  428  — 
Records,  429  — The  Code  of  War,  430  —  Religion,  433  — Idea  of  Divinity,  434 

—  Origin  of  Faith,  434  — Manitous,  435  —  Sacrifices,  436  — Penance,  437  — 
Guardian  Spirits,  438  — Medicine  Men,  438  — Temples,  440  — Dreams,  440  — 
Faith  in  Immortality,  441  — Burials,  441 — The  World  of  Shades,  442  —  Graves, 
443. 

CHAPTER  XXXYIII. 

their  nature  and  origin. 

Natural  Endowments,  p.  446  —  Correspondence  of  Powers,  447  —  Organic 
Differences,  448  —  Inflexibility,  449  —  Uniformity  of  Organization,  449  — Physi- 
cal Characteristics,  450  —  Progress  of  Improvement,  451  —  Origin,  451  — 
Mounds,  451  —  Traditions,  453  —  Analogies  of  Language,  454  —  Of  Customs, 
455  —  Israelites,  Egyptians,  Carthaginians,  456  —  Scandinavians,  Chinese,  457 

—  Astronomical  Science  in  America  and  Asia,  457  —  American  Culture  its 
own,  458  —  Connection  of  America  and  Asia,  459  —  The  American  and  'Mon- 
golian Races,  460. 

CHAPTER  XXXIX. 

colonial   rivalry  of  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND. 

House  of  Hanover;  George  I.,  p.  462  — Philip  of  Orleans,  463  — Walpole,  464 

—  Fleury,  464  —  War  with  the  Yamassees,  465  —  Revolution  in  Carolina,  467  — 
It  becomes  a  Royal  Province,  468  —  Treaty  with  the  Cherokees,  469  —  Disputes 
with  France  on  the  North-east,  470  —  Sebastian  Rasles,   471  —  His  Death,  474 

—  Lovewell's  Fight,  474  —  Peace  with  the  Eastern  Indians,  474  —  Bounds  on 
the  Lakes  and  St.  Lawrence,  475  —  Oswego,  475  —  Claims  of  England,  476  — 
French  Forts  at  CroAvn  Point,  at  Niagara,  477. 


CONTENTS.  XI 


CHAPTER  XL. 

PROGRESS   OF   LOUISIANA. 

Louisiana,  p.  479  —  The  French  on  the  Ohio,  480  —  English  Jealousy  aroused, 
480  —  Indifference  of  Walpole,  481  —  Vincennes,  481  — Louisiana  under  Crozat, 
482  —  The  Credit  System  of  Law,  484  —  The  Mississippi  Company,  485  —  New 
Orleans,  486  —  War  between  France  and  Spain,  487  —  France  claims  Texas,  487 

—  Progress  and  End  of  the  Mississippi  Company,  487  —  Its  Moral,  490  —  The 
Natchez,  491  —  They  begin  a  Massacre,  493  —  The  Natchez  are  defeated,  494  — 
The  Crown  resumes  Louisiana,  495  — War  with  the  Chickasaws,  495  —  D'Arta- 
guette  and  Vincennes,  497—  War  renewed,  498  —  Louisiana  in  1740,  499. 

CHAPTER    XLL 

TWENTY-SIX  YEARS  OF   COLONIAL  ADMINISTRATION  UNDER  THE  HOUSE   OF 
HANOVER. 

Progress  of  Anglo-American  Colonies,  p.  500  —  Taxation  by  Parliament,  500 

—  Regulation  of  Charters,  501  —  Colonial  Manufactures  repressed,  502  —  Par- 
liament and  Colonial  Administration,  503  —  Carolina,  503  —  Pennsylvania,  503 

—  Virginia,  503  —  New  Jersey,  503  —  New  York,  504 — Massachusetts,  504  — 
Policy  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  505  —  The  Board  of  Trade  on  Colonial  Commerce 
and  such  Encroachments,  506 — Proposes  a  New  System  of  Colonial  Admin- 
istration, 507  —  The  Charters  in  Danger,  508  — Dummer's  Defence  of  the  Char- 
ters, 508— Advice  of  Trenchard,  510  — Flight  of  Shute  to  England,  510  — The 
Duke  of  Newcastle,  511  —  Opinion  of  Yorke  on  the  Power  of  Parliament  to  tax 
the  Colonies,  512  —  New  York  Assembly  and  Periodical  Grants,  512  —  Burnet 
succeeded  by  Montgomery,  513  —  Sir  William  Keith  and  a  New  Plan  of  Colo- 
nial Administration,  513  —  Burnet  in  Boston,  513  —  Belcher  made  Governor  of 
Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire,  515  —  New  York  and  New  Jersev,  616  — 
Carolina,  517  —  Contest  on  Laws  of  Inheritance,  519  —  Gee  on  Colonial  Trade, 
519  —  The  Restrictive  System,  521  —  Discrimination  in  Favor  of  Southern  Colo- 
nies, 522  —  Of  the  Islands  against  the  Continent,  523  —  Prohibitory  Duties  for 
the  Colonists,  524  — Cosby,  524  — The  Press,  525  — Clarke  in  New  York,  526 

—  Walpole  and  Colonial  Commerce,  527  —  The  Board  of  Trade  urges  Strong 
Measures,  528  —  Paper  Money,  529  —  Religion  in  the  Colonies,  532  —  Beneficent 
Measure  of  Parliament,  533 — Prosperity  of  the  Colonies,  533  —  Immigration, 
634  —  Berkeley,  535 — Education  and  the  Press,  537  —  Benjamin  Franklin,  538 

—  Growth  of  Liberty,  541. 

CHAPTER   XLH. 

BRITISH  MONOPOLY  OF   THE   SLAVE-TRADE.      COLONIZATION  OF   GEORGIA. 

Motives  of  an  Historian  to  write  a  True  History ;  Test  of  Truth,  p.   544 

Truth  in  History  can  be  ascertained,  545  —  The  Law  of  Progress,  545  —  History 
the  Record  of  God's  Providence,  545  — Edwards,  Vico,  Bossuet,  545— Metro- 
politan Monopolists  divided,  546  —  South  Sea  Company  and  the  Asgiento,  547  — 


Xll  CONTENTS. 

England  and  the  Slave-Trade,  547 — Slave  Coast,  548  —  The  Slave  in  Africa, 
548  —  The  Passage,  549  —  The  African  in  North  America,  550  —  Numbers,  551 

—  Labors,  551  —  Progress;  Emancipation,  552  —  Conversion  did  not  enfran- 
chise, 553  —  Color,  554  —  Colonies  and  the  Slave-Trade,  554 — England  and  the 
Slave-Trade,  555  —  Moral  Opinion,  555  —  English  Legislation,  557  —  England 
compels  the  Colonies  to  admit  Negro  Slaves,  558 — England  and  Spain,  559  — 
Colonization  of  Georgia  proposed,  560  —  Oglethorpe  and  Imprisonment  for 
Debt,  560  —  Plans  a  Colony,  561  —  Oglethorpe  at  Savannah,  562  —  Council  with 
the  Muskohgees,  563  —  Cherokees  and  Choctaws,  564 — Lutheran  Emigrants, 
564  —  Oglethorpe  returns  to  England,  566 — Land  Titles,  567  —  Ardent  Spirits, 
567  —  Slaves,  567 — New  Emigration,  568  —  John  and  Charles  Wesley,  568  — 
Whitefield,  569  —  Frederica,  570— Darien,  570  — Contest  on  Boundaries,  571  — 
Treaty  with  Indians,  572. 

CHAPTER  XLTII. 

WAR  BETVTEEN   GREAT   BRITAIN   AND   SPAIN. 

Oglethorpe  among  the  Muskohgees,  p.  573  —  England  and  English  Smugglers, 
574  —  Tale  of  Jenkins's  Ears,  575  —  The  Convention,  576  —  War,  577  — Anson, 
577 — Vernon  at  Porto  Bello,  577  —  Attack  on  Carthagena,  579  —  111  Success, 
579  —  Oglethorpe  invades  Florida,  580  —  Spaniards  invade  Georgia,  580  — 
Character  of  Oglethorpe,  581  —  Slavery  in  Georgia,  582  —  Fleury  averse  to 
War,  582  —  War  of  the  Austrian  Succession,  583  —  War  of  France  with  Eng- 
land, 583  —  The  Pretender,  584  —  Frederic  11.  and  Prussia,  585  —  War  in  the 
East  Indies,  585  —  Madras  taken,  585  —  Behring  discovers  North-West  America, 
586  —  The  Central  Provinces  undisturbed,  586  —  Treaty  at  Lancaster  with  the 
Six  Nations,  587  —  Franklin's  Volunteer  Militia,  588  —  New  England  resolves 
to  conquer  Louisburg,  588  —  The  Expedition,  589  —  Sails  to  Cape  Breton,  590 

—  Lands  at  Louisburg,  591  — The  Siege,  592  — The  Surrender,  593  — 111  Suc- 
cess of  French  Fleets,  594  —  Plan  of  conquering  Canada  abandoned,  594  — 
Kalm's  Opinion,  594  —  Impressment  of  Sailors,  595 — Congress  of  Aix-la- 
ChapeUe,  596  —  Washington,  597. 


COLONIAL   HISTORY, 

CONTINUED. 


VOL.  II. 


'-'»■     I  HE 

UNIVERSITY 


COLONIAL   HISTORY, 

CONTINUED. 
CHAPTER   XXI. 

MARYLAND. 

The  progress  of  Maryland,  under  the  more  generous  pro- 
prietary government,  was  tranquil  and  rapid.  Like 
Virginia,  Maryland  was  a  colony  of  planters  ;  its  I66O. 
staple  was  tobacco,  and  its  prosperity  was  equally 
checked  by  the  navigation  acts.  Like  Virginia,  it  possessed 
no  considerable  village ;  its  inhabitants  were  scattered  among 
the  woods  and  along  the  rivers  ;  each  plantation  was  a  little 
world  within  itself,  and  legislation  vainly  attempted  the 
creation  of  towns  by  statute.  Like  Virginia,  its  laborers 
were  in  part  indented  servants,  whose  term  of  service  was 
limited  by  persevering  legislation ;  in  part  negro  slaves 
whose  importation  was  favored  both  by  English  cupidity 
and  by  provincial  statutes.  As  in  Virginia,  the  appoint- 
ing power  to  nearly  every  office  in  the  counties  as  well  as  in 
the  province  was  not  with  the  people,  and  the  judiciary  was 
placed  beyond  their  control ;  while  the  party  of  the  propri- 
etary, which  possessed  the  government,  was  animated  by  a 
jealous  regard  for  his  prerogative  and  derived  his  authority 
from  the  will  of  Heaven.  As  in  Virginia,  the  taxes  imposed 
by  the  county  officers  were  not  conceded  by  the  direct  vote 
of  the  people,  and  were  burdensome  alike  from  their  exces- 
sive amount  and  the  manner  of  their  levy.  But,  though 
the  administration  of  Maryland  did  not  favor  the  increasing 
spirit  of  popular  liberty,  it  was  marked  by  conciliation  and 
humanity.  To  foster  industry,  to  promote  union,  to  cherish 
religious  peace,  —  these  were  the  honest  i>urposes  of  Lord 
Baltimore  during  his  long  supremacy. 


4  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXI. 

At  the  restoration,  the  authority  of  Philip  Calvert,  the 
proprietary's  deputy,  was  promptly  and  quietly  recognised. 
Fendall,  the  former  governor,  who  had  obeyed  the  impulse 
of  the  popular  will  as  paramount  to  the  authority  of  Bal- 
timore, was  convicted  of  treason.  His  punishment 
1661.  was  mild  ;  a  wise  clemency  veiled  the  incipient  strife 
between  the  people  and  their  sovereign,  under  a  gen- 
eral amnesty.  Peace  was  restored,  but  Maryland  was  not 
placed  beyond  the  influence  of  the  ideas  which  that  age  of 
revolution  had  set  in  motion ;  and  the  earliest  opportunity 
would  renew  the  strife. 

Yet  the  happiness  of  the  colony  was  enviable.  The  per- 
secuted and  the  unhappy  thronged  to  its  domains.  If  Bal- 
timore was,  in  one  sense,  a  monarch,  his  monarchy  was 
tolerable  to  the  exile  who  sought  for  freedom  and  repose. 
Numerous  ships  found  employment  in  its  harbors.  The 
white  laborer  rose  rapidly  to  the  condition  of  a  free  propri- 
etor ;  the  female  emigrant  was  sure  to  improve  her  condi- 
tion, and  the  charities  of  home  gathered  round  her  in  the 
Kew  World.  In  the  wilderness,  where  artificial  amuse- 
ments were  unknown,  the  planter's  heart  was  in  his  family ; 
his  pride  in  his  children. 

Emigrants  arrived  from  every  clime  ;  and  the  colo- 
1666.  nial  legislature  extended  its  sympathies  to  many 
nations  as  well  as  to  many  sects.  From  France  came 
Huguenots ;  from  Germany,  from  Holland,  from  Sweden, 
from  Finland,  I  believe  from  Piedmont,  the  children  of 
misfortune  sought  protection  under  the  tolerant  sceptre  of 
the  Roman  Catholic.  The  country  of  Jerome  and  of  Huss 
sent  forth  its  sons,  who  at  once  were  made  citizens  of  Mary- 
land with  equal  franchises.  The  empire  of  justice  and  hu- 
manity, according  to  the  light  of  those  days,  had  been 
complete  but  for  the  sufferings  of  the  people  called  Quakers. 
Yet  they  were  not  persecuted  for  their  religious  worship, 
which  was  held  publicly  and  without  interruption.  "  The 
truth  was  received  with  reverence  and  gladness  ; "  and  with 
secret  satisfaction  George  Fox  relates  that  members  of  the 
legislature  and  the  council,  persons  of  quality,  and  justices 
of  the  peace,  were  present  at  a  large  and  very  heavenly 


1674.  MARYLAND.  5 

meeting.  The  Indian  emperor,  after  a  great  debate  with 
his  council,  came,  followed  by  his  kings,  with  their  subordi- 
nate chieftains,  and,  reclining  on  the  eastern  shore  of  the 
Chesapeake,  they  listened  to  the  evening  discourse  of  the 
benevolent  wanderer.  At  a  later  day,  the  heir  of  the  prov- 
ince attended  a  Quaker  assembly.  But  the  refusal  of  the 
Quakers  to  perform  military  duty  subjected  them  to  fines 
and  harsh  imprisonment ;  the  refusal  to  take  an  oath  some- 
times involved  them  in  a  forfeiture  of  property ;  nor  was 
it  before  1688,  six  years  after  the  arrival  of  William  Penn 
in  America,  that  indulgence  was  fully  conceded. 

Meantime,  Charles,  the  eldest  son  of  the  proprie- 
tary, resided  in  his  patrimony.     He  visited  the  banks       1662. 
of  .the  Delaware,  and  struggled  to  extend  the  limits 
of  his  jurisdiction.    As  in  Massachusetts,  money  was  coined 
at  a  provincial  mint,  and,  at  a  later  day,  the  value 
of  foreign  coins  was  arbitrarily  advanced.     A  duty       1686. 
was  levied  on  the  tonnage  of  every  vessel  that  en-       i662. 
tered  the  waters.     A  state  house  was  built  at  a  cost       1674. 
of  forty  thousand  pounds  of  tobacco,  —  about  a  thou- 
sand dollars.     The  Indian  nations  were  pacified;  and       1666. 
their  rights,   subordination,   and  commerce  defined. 
By  acts  of  compromise  between  Lord  Baltimore  and       1662. 
the  representatives  of  the  people,  the  power  of  the       i67i. 
former  to  raise  taxes  was  accurately  limited,  and  the       1674. 
mode  of  paying  quit-rents  established  on  terms  favor- 
able to  the  colony ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  a  custom  of 
two  shillings  a  hogshead  was  levied  on  all  exported  tobacco, 
of  which  a  moiety  was  appropriated  to  the  defence  of  the 
government ;  the  residue  became  conditionally  the  revenue 
of  the  proprietary. 

Thus  was  the  declining  life  of  Cecilius  Lord  Baltimore, 
the  father  of  Maryland,  the  tolerant  legislator,  blessed  with 
success.  The  colony  which  he  had  planted  in  youth  crowned 
his  old  age  with  its  gratitude.  Who  among  his  peers  could 
vie  with  him  in  honors  ?  A  firm  supporter  of  prerogative, 
a  friend  to  the  Stuarts,  he  was  touched  with  the  sentiment  of 
humanity ;  though  of  the  Roman  church,  of  which  he  ven- 
erated the  expositions  of  truth  as  infallible,  he  established 


6  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXI. 

an  incipient  equality  among  sects.  He  knew  not  the  worth 
of  popular  power ;  he  had  not  perceived  the  character  of  the 
institutions  which  were  forming  in  the  New  World,  and  his 
benevolent  designs  were  the  fruit  of  his  personal  character, 
his  proprietary  interests,  and  the  necessity  of  his  position. 
In  Rhode  Island,  intellectual  freedom  was  a  principle  which 
Roger  Williams  had  elicited  from  the  sympathies  of  the 
people ;  in  Maryland,  it  was  the  policy  of  the  sovereign, 
who  did  not  know  that  ideas  find  no  secure  shelter  but  in 
the  breast  of  the  multitude.  The  people  are  less  easily 
shaken  than  the  prince.  Rhode  Island  never  lost  the  treas- 
ure of  which  it  had  become  conscious.  The  principle  of 
liberty  of  conscience  was  in  Maryland  an  uncertain  posses- 
sion, till  the  same  process  of  thought,  which  had  redeemed 
the  little  colony  of  the  north,  slowly  but  surely  infused 
itself  into  the  public  mind  on  the  Chesapeake.  Lord  Bal- 
timore failed  to  obtain  that  fame  which  springs  from  suc- 
cessful influence  on  the  masses ;  his  personal  merits 
No^^30.  ^^®  ^^^®  from  stain.  He  died  after  a  supremacy  of 
more  than  forty-three  years.  The  commercial  me- 
tropolis of  Maryland  commemorates  his  name. 

The  death  of  Cecilius  recalled  to  England  the  heir 
1676.       of  the  province,  who  had  now  administered  its  gov- 
ernment for  fourteen  years  with  a  moderation  which 
had  been   rewarded  by   the  increasing  prosperity   of    his 
patrimony.     Previous  to  his  departure,  the  code  of  laws  re- 
ceived a  thorough  revision;  the  memorable  act  of 
A^T%o.  toleration  was  confirmed.     Virginia  had,  in   1670, 
prohibited  the  importation  of  felons  until  the  king 
or  privy  council  should  reverse  the  order.     In  Maryland,  six 
years  later,  "the  importation  of   convicted  persons"  was 
absolutely  prohibited  without  regard  to  the  will  of  the  king 
or  the  English  parliament,  and  in  1692  the  prohibition  was 
renewed.    The  established  revenues  of  the  proprietary  were 
continued. 

As  Lord  Baltimore  saUed  for  England,  the  seeds  of  dis- 
content were  already  germinating.  The  office  of  proprietary, 
a  feudal  principality  with  extensive  manors  in  every  county, 
was  an  anomaly ;  the  sole  hereditary  legislator  in  the  prov- 


1681.  MARYLAND.  T 

ince,  his  power  was  not  in  harmony  with  the  political  pre- 
dilections of  the  colonists  or  the  habits  of  the  New  World. 
The  doctrine  of  the  paramount  authority  of  an  hereditary 
sovereign  was  at  war  with  the  spirit  which  emigration 
fostered,  and  the  principles  of  civil  equality  naturally  grew 
up  in  all  the  British  settlements.  The  insurrection  of  Bacon 
found  friends  north  of  the  Potomac,  and  a  rising  was  checked 
only  by  the  prompt  energy  of  the  government.  But  the 
vague  and  undejSned  cravings  after  change,  the  tendency 
toward  more  popular  forms  of  administration,  could 
not  be  repressed.  The  assembly  which  was  convened  i678. 
during  the  absence  of  the  proprietary  shared  in  this 
spirit ;  and  the  right  of  suffrage  was  established  on  a 
corresponding  basis.  The  party  of  "  Baconists "  had  ob- 
tained great  influence  on  the  public  mind.  Differences 
between  the  proprietary  and  the  people  became  ap- 
parent. On  his  return  to  the  province,  he  himself,  j^ll\j^ 
by  proclamation,  annulled  the  rule  which  the  rep- 
resentatives of  Maryland  had  established  respecting  the 
elective  franchise,  and,  by  an  arbitrary  ordinance, 
limited  the  right  of  suffrage  to  freemen  possessing  a  Sept.  6. 
freehold  of  fifty  acres,  or  having  a  visible  personal 
estate  of  forty  pounds.  No  difference  was  made  with 
respect  to  color.  In  Virginia,  the  negro,  the  mulatto,  and 
the  Indian  were  first  disfranchised  in  1723 ;  in  Maryland, 
they  retained  by  law  the  right  of  suffrage  till  the  time 
when  the  poorest  white  man  recovered  his  equal  franchise. 
Tlie  restrictions,  which  for  one  hundred  and  twenty-one 
years  successfully  resisted  the  principle  of  universal  suffrage 
among  freemen  of  the  Caucasian  race,  were  introduced 
in  the  midst  of  scenes  of  civil  commotion.  Fendall,  the 
old  republican,  was  again  planning  schemes  of  insurrection, 
and  even  of  independence.  The  state  was  not  only  troubled 
with  poverty,  but  was  in  danger  of  falling  to  pieces  ;  for  it 
was  said,  "  The  maxims  of  the  old  Lord  Baltimore  will  not 
do  in  the  present  age." 

The  insurrection  was  for  the  time  repressed ;  but  its 
symptoms  were  the  more  alarming  from  the  religious  fa- 
naticism with  which  the  principle  of  popular  power  was  com- 


8  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXL 

bined.  The  discontents  were  increased  by  hostility  toward 
the  creed  of  papists ;  and,  as  Protestantism  became  a  politi- 
cal sect,  the  proprietary  government  was  in  the  issue  easily 
subverted;  for  it  had  struck  no  deep  roots  either  in  the 
religious  tenets,  the  political  faith,  or  the  social  condition  of 
the  colony.  It  had  rested  only  on  a  grateful  deference, 
which  was  rapidly  wearing  away. 

On  the  death  of  the  first  feudal  sovereign  of  Mary- 

167fi 

land,  the  archbishop  of  Canterbury  had  been  solicited 
to  secure  an  establishment  of  the  Anglican  church,  which 
clamored  for  favor  in  the  province  where  it  enjoyed  equality. 
Misrepresentations  were  not  spared.  "Maryland,"  said  a 
clergyman  of  the  church,  "  is  a  pest-house  of  iniquity."  The 
cure  for  all  evil  was  to  be  "  an  established  support  of  a 
Protestant  ministry."  The  prelates  demanded  not  freedom, 
but  privilege ;  an  establishment  to  be  maintained  at  the 
common  expense  of  the  province.  Lord  Baltimore  re- 
sisted ;  the  Roman  Catholic  was  inflexible  in  his  regard  for 
freedom  of  worship. 

The  opposition  to  Lord  Baltimore  as  a  feudal  sovereign 
easily  united  with  Protestant  bigotry.  When  an 
1681.  insurrection  was  suppressed  by  methods  of  clemency 
and  forbearance,  the  government  was  accused  of  par- 
tiality towards  papists ;  and  the  English  ministry  issued  an 
order  that  offices  of  government  in  Maryland  should  be 
intrusted  exclusively  to  Protestants.  Roman  Catholics  were 
disfranchised  in  the  province  which  they  had  planted. 

With  the  colonists  Lord  Baltimore  was  at  issue  for  his 
hereditary  authority,  with  the  English  church  for  his  relig- 
ious faith  ;  attempts  to  modify  the  unhappy  effects  of  the 
navigation  acts  on  colonial  industry  involved  him  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  commercial  policy  of  England.  His  rights  of 
jurisdiction  had  been  disregarded ;  the  custom-house  officer 
of  Maryland  had  been  placed  under  the  superintendence 
of  the  governor  of  Virginia ;  and  the  unwelcome  relations, 
resisted  by  the  officers  of  Lord  Baltimore,  had  led  to  quar- 
rels and  bloodshed,  which  were  followed  by  a  con- 
1685.  troversy  with  Virginia.  The  accession  of  James  II. 
seemed   an   auspicious  event  for  a  Roman  Catholic 


1688.  MARYLAND.  9 

proprietary;  but  the  first  result  from  parliament  was  an 
increased  burden  on  the  industry  of  the  colony,  by  means 
of  a  new  tax  on  the  consumption  of  its  produce  in  England  ; 
while  the  king,  who  meditated  the  subversion  of  British 
freedom,  resolved  with  impartial  injustice  to  reduce  all  the 
colonies  to  a  direct  dependence  on  the  crown.  The 
proprietary,  hastening  to  England,  vainly  pleaded  1687. 
his  irreproachable  administration.  His  remonstrance 
was  disregarded,  his  chartered  rights  despised  ;  and  a  writ 
of  quo  warranto  was  ordered  against  his  patent.  But, 
before  the  legal  forms  could  be  brought  to  an  issue,  the 
people  of  England  had  sat  in  judgment  on  their  king. 

The  approach  of  the  revolution  effected  no  im- 
mediate benefit  to  Lord  Baltimore.  What  though 
mutinous  speeches  and  practices  against  the  proprietary 
government  were  punishable  by  whipping,  boring  of  the 
tongue,  imprisonment,  exile,  death  itself?  The  spirit  of 
popular  liberty,  allied  to  Protestant  bigotry  and  the  clamor 
of  a  pretended  popish  plot,  was  too  powerful  an  adversary 
for  his  colonial  government.  William  Joseph,  the  presi- 
dent to  whom  he  had  intrusted  the  administration,  con- 
vened an  assembly.  The  address,  on  opening  it,  explains 
the  character  of  the  proprietary  and  of  the  insurrection 
which  followed.  "  Divine  Providence,"  said  the  represen- 
tative of  Lord  Baltimore,  "  hath  ordered  us  to  meet.  The 
power  by  which  we  are  assembled  here  is  undoubtedly 
derived  from  God  to  the  king,  and  from  the  king  to  his 
excellency,  the  lord  proprietary,  and  from  his  said  lordship 
to  us.  The  power,  therefore,  whereof  I  speak,  being,  as 
said,  firstly,  in  God  and  from  God ;  secondly,  in  the  king 
and  from  the  king ;  thirdly,  in  his  lordship  ;  fourthly,  in  us, 
—  the  end  and  duty  of  and  for  which  this  assembly  is  now 
called  and  met  is  that  from  these  four  heads  ;  to  wit, 
from  God,  the  king,  our  lord,  and  selves."  Having  j^^^* 
thus  established  the  divine  right  of  the  proprietary, 
he  endeavored  to  confirm  it  by  invading  the  privileges  of 
the  assembly,  and  exacting  a  special  oath  of  fidelity  to  his 
dominion.  The  assembly  resisted,  and  was  prorogued.  Is 
it  strange  that  excitements  increased ;  that  they  were  height- 


10  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXL 

ened  by  tidings  of  the  invasion  of  England ;  that  they  were 
kindled  into  a  flame  by  a  delay  in  proclaiming  the  new  sov- 
ereign ?  An  organized  insurrection  was  conducted  by  John 
Coode,  a  worthless  man,  of  old  an  associate  of  Fendall ;  and 

"The  Association  in  arms  for  the  defence  of  the 
Ai?g^23.  Protestant  religion  "  usurped  the  government.     The 

party  was  strengthened  by  the  most  false  and  virulent 
calumnies  against  the  absent  proprietary,  and  the  overthrow 
of  liberty  of  conscience  was  menaced  by  the  insurrection. 
But  would  the  reformed  English  government  suffer  papists 
to  be  oppressed  in  the  colony  where  they  had  taken  some 
Bteps  towards  toleration  ?  Would  the  new  dynasty  seek  to 
appropriate  to  itself  the  power  and  the  rights  that  had  been 
wrested  from  Lord  Baltimore  by  turbulent  violence  ?  The 
method  pursued  by  the  ministry  of  William  and  Mary 
towards  Maryland  would  test  their  sincerity,  and  show 
whether  they  were  governed  by  universal  principles  of 
justice,  or  had  derived  their  inspiration  for  liberty  from 
circumstances  and  times  ;  whether  they  had  made  a  revo- 
lution in  favor  of  humanity  or  in  behalf  of  established  privi- 
leges. 

About  two  years  after  Virginia  had  been  granted 
ju^y^s.    ^^  Arlington  and  Culpepper,  the  latter  obtained  an 

appointment  as  governor  of  Virginia  for  life,  and  was 

proclaimed  soon  after  Berkeley's  departure.  The 
Ai5J25.  Ancient  Dominion  was  changed  into  a  proprietary 

government,  and  the  administration  surrendered,  as 
it  were,  to  one  of  the  proprietaries,  who  at  the  same  time 
was  sole  possessor  of  the  domain  between  the  Rappahan- 
nock and  the  Potomac.  Culpepper  was  disposed  to  regard 
his  office  as  a  sinecure,  but  the  king  chid  him  for  remaining 

in  England ;  and,  embarking  for  Virginia,  the  gover- 
1G80.       nor,  early  in  1680,  arrived  in  his  province.     He  had 

no  high-minded  regard  for  Virginia;  he  valued  his 
office  and  his  patents  only  as  property.  Clothed  by  the 
royal  clemency  with  power  to  bury  past  contests,  he  per- 
verted the  duty  of  humanity  into  a  means  of  enriching  him- 
self and  increasing  his  authority.  Yet  Culpepper  was  not 
singular  in  his  selfishness ;   it    was  in  harmony  with  the 


1680. 


MARYLAND.  H 


maxims  which  prevailed  in  England.  As  the  British  mer- 
chant claimed  the  monopoly  of  colonial  commerce,  as  the 
British  manufacturer  valued  Virginia  only  as  a  market 
for  his  goo(Js,  so  British  courtiers  looked  to  appointments 
in  America  as  a  source  of  revenue  to  themselves,  or  a 
provision  for  their  dependants.  Nothing  but  Lord  Culpep- 
per's avarice  gives  him  a  place  in  American  history. 

Having  taken  the  oath  of  office  at  Jamestown,  and  leso. 
organized  a  council  of  members  friendly  to  preroga^  ^^^  ^^' 
tive,  the  wilful  followers  of  Bacon  were  disfranchised.  Till 
this  time  the  council  and  house  sat  together.  To  an 
assembly  convened  in  June,  three  acts,  framed  in  Junes. 
England  and  confirmed  in  advance  by  the  great  seal, 
were  proposed  for  acceptance.  The  first  was  of  indemnity 
and  oblivion,  —  less  clement  than  had  been  hoped,  yet  defin- 
itive, and  therefore  welcome.  The  second  withdrew  from 
the  assembly  the  powers  of  naturalization,  and  declared  it 
a  prerogative  of  the  governor.  And  the  third,  still  more 
grievous  to  colonial  liberty,  constructed  after  an  English 
precedent,  yet  so  hateful  to  Virginians  that  it  encountered 
severe  opposition  and  was  carried  only  from  hope  of  par- 
don for  the  rebellion,  authorized  a  perpetual  export  duty  of 
two  shillings  a  hogshead  on  tobacco,  and  granted  the  pro- 
ceeds for  the  support  of  government,  to  be  accounted  for 
not  to  the  assembly,  but  to  the  king.  Thus  the  power  of 
Virginia  over  colonial  taxation,  the  only  check  on  the 
administration,  was  voted  away  without  condition.  The 
royal  revenue  was  ample  and  was  perpetual.  Is  it  strange 
that  political  parties  in  Virginia  showed  signs  of  change? 
that  many  who  had  been  zealous  among  the  Cavaliers 
learned  to  distrust  the  royal  influence? 

The  salary  of  governor  of  Virginia  had  been  a  thousand 
pounds  :  for  Lord  Culpepper  it  was  doubled,  because  he  was 
a  peer.  A  further  grant  was  made  for  house-rent.  Per- 
quisites of  every  kind  were  sought  for  and  increased.  Kay, 
the  peer  was  not  an  honest  man.  He  defrauded  the  sol- 
diers of  a  part  of  their  wages  by  an  arbitrary  change  in 
the  value  of  current  coin.  Having  made  himself  familiar 
with  Virginia,  and  employed  the  summer  profitably,  in  the 


12  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXL 

month  of  August  he  sailed  for  England  from  Boston.     How 
unlike  Winthrop  and  Haynes,  Clarke  and  Williams ! 

Virginia  was  impoverished  ;  the  low  price  of  tobacco  left 

the  planter  without  hope.  The  assembly  had  at- 
1680.       tempted  by  legislation  to  call  towns  into  being  and 

cherish  manufactures.  With  little  regard  to  colonial 
liberties,  it  also  petitioned  the  king  to  prohibit  by  proclama- 
tion the  planting  of  tobacco  in  the  colonies  for  one  year. 
The  first  measure  could  not  countervail  the  navigation  acts ; 
with  regard  to  the  second,  riots  were  substituted  for  the 
royal  proclamation,  and  mobs  collected  to  cut  up  the  fields 
of  tobacco-plants. 
1682  Culpepper  returned  to  reduce  Virginia  to  quiet, 

and  to  promote  his  own  interests  as  proprietor  of  the 
Northern  Neck.  A  few  victims  on  the  gallows  silenced 
discontent.  The  assembly  was  convened,  and  its  little 
remaining  control  over  the  executive  was  wrested  from  it. 
The  council  constituted  the  general  court  of  Virginia ;  ac- 
cording to  usage,  appeals  lay  from  it  to  the  general  assem- 
bly. The  custom  menaced  Culpepper  with  defeat  in  his 
attempts  to  appropriate  to  himself  the  cultivated  planta- 
tions of  the  Northern  Neck.  The  artful  magistrate,  for  a 
private  and  lucrative  purpose,  fomented  a  dispute  between 
the  council  and  the  assembly.  The  burgesses,  in  their  high 
court  of  appeal,  claimed  to  sit  alone,  excluding  the  council 
from  whose  decision  the  appeal  was  made ;  and  Culpepper, 

having  referred  the  question  to  the  king  for  decision, 
May  23.   ^^^^  announced  that  no  appeals  whatever  should  be 

permitted  to  the  assembly,  nor  to  the  king  in  council, 
under  the  value  of  one  hundred  pounds  sterling.  It  shows 
the  spirit  of  the  council  of  Virginia,  that  it  welcomed  the 
new  rule,  desiring  only  that  there  might  be  no  appeal  to 
the  king  under  the  value  of  two  hundred  pounds.  The 
holders  of  land  within  the  grant  of  Culpepper  now  lay  at 
his  mercy,  and  were  compelled  eventually  to  negotiate  a 
compromise. 

All  accounts  agree  in  describing  the  condition  of  Vir- 
ginia, at  this  time,  as  one  of  extreme  distress.  Culpepper 
had  no  compassion  for  poverty,  no  sympathy  for  a  province 


1685.  MARYLAND.  13 


% 


•wasted  by  perverse  legislation  ;  and  the  residence  in  Vir- 
ginia was  so  irksome  that  he  returned  to  England.     Nor 
did  he  retain  his  office  as  governor.     His  patent  was  for 
life;  but  it  was  rendered  void  by  a  process  of  law,  not 
so  much  from  regard  to  colonial  liberties   as  to  recover 
a  prerogative  for  the  crown.     The  council  of  Vir- 
ginia reported   the   griefs   and   restlessness    of    the    ]v/ay\ 
country,  and  renewed  the  request  that   the   grant 
to  Culpepper  and  Arlington  might  be  recalled.     The  ex- 
haustion of  the  province  rendered  negotiation  more  easy ; 
the  design  agreed  well  with   the   new  colonial   policy  of 
Charles  II.     Arlington  surrendered  his  rights  to  Cul- 
pepper ;  and  in  the  following  year  Virginia  became  j^fy  25. 
again  a  royal  province. 

Lord  Howard  of  Effingham  was  Culpepper's  succes-  Aug. 
sor.  Like  so  many  before  and  after  him,  he  solicited 
office  in  America  to  get  money,  and  resorted  to  the  usual 
expedient  of  exorbitant  fees.  It  is  said  he  did  not  scruple 
to  share  perquisites  with  his  clerks.  The  ideas  of  right  and 
wrong  —  the  same  in  every  breast,  if  the  voice  within  does 
but  find  a  willing  listener  —  are  yet  obscured  and  perverted 
by  men's  interests  and  habits.  In  Virginia,  the  avarice  of 
Effingham  was  the  public  scorn ;  in  England,  it  met  with 
no  severe  reprobation. 

The  accession  of  James  II.  made  but  few  changes  i685. 
in  the  political  condition  of  Virginia.  The  suppres- 
sion of  Monmouth's  rebellion  gave  to  the  colony  useful 
citizens.  Men  connect  themselves,  in  the  eyes  of  posterity, 
with  the  objects  in  which  they  take  delight.  James  II.  was 
inexorable  towards  his  brother's  favorite.  Monmouth  was 
beheaded ;  and  the  triumph  of  legitimacy  was  commemo- 
rated by  a  medal,  representing  the  heads  of  Monmouth  and 
Argyle  on  an  altar,  their  bleeding  bodies  beneath,  with  this 
inscription,  "  Sic  aras  et  sceptra  tuemur^'*  "  Thus  we  de- 
fend our  altars  and  our  throne."  "  Lord  chief  justice  is 
making  his  campaign  in  the  west : "  I  quote  from  a  letter 
which  James  II.,  with  his  own  hand,  wrote  to  one  in 
Europe,  in  allusion  to  Jeffries's  circuit  for  punishing  the 
insurgents ;  "  he  has  already  condemned  several  hundreds, 


14 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXI. 


some  of  whom  are  already  executed,  more  are  to  be,  and 
the  others  sent  to  the  plantations."  This  is  the  language  of 
the  sovereign  of  our  ancestors.  The  prisoners  condemned 
to  transportation  were  a  salable  commodity.  Such  was 
the  demand  for  labor  in  America  that  convicts  and  laborers 
were  regularly  purchased  and  shipped  to  the  colonies, 
where  they  were  sold  as  indented  servants.  The  courtiers 
round  James  II.  exulted  in  the  rich  harvest  which  the  re- 
bellion promised,  and  begged  of  the  monarch  frequent  gifts 
of  their  condemned  countrymen.  Jeffries  heard  of 
Sep?*i9.  *^®  scramble,  and  indignantly  addressed  the  king : 
"  I  beseech  your  majesty  that  I  may  inform  you  that 
each  prisoner  will  be  worth  ten  pound,  if  not  fifteen  pound, 
apiece ;  and,  sir,  if  your  majesty  orders  these  as  you  have 
already  designed,  persons  that  have  not  suffered  in  the 
service  will  run  away  with  the  booty."  At  length  the 
spoils  were  distributed.  The  convicts  were  in  part  persons 
of  family  and  education,  accustomed  to  elegance  and  ease. 
"  Take  all  care,"  wrote  the  monarch,  under  the  conn- 
ect. 4.  tersign  of  Sunderland,  to  the  government  in  Vir- 
ginia, "  take  all  care  that  they  continue  to  serve  for 
ten  years  at  least,  and  that  they  be  not  permitted  in  any 
manner  to  redeem  themselves,  by  money  or  otherwise,  until 
that  term  be  fully  expired.  Prepare  a  bill  for  the  assembly 
of  our  colony,  with  such  clauses  as  shall  be  requisite  for  this 
purpose."  No  Virginia  legislature  seconded  such  malice ; 
and  in  December,  1689,  the  exiles  were  pardoned.  Tyranny 
and  injustice  peopled  America  with  men  nurtured  in  suffer- 
ing and  adversity.  The  history  of  our  colonization  is  the 
history  of  the  crimes  of  Europe. 

On  another  occasion,  Jeffries  exerted  an  opposite  influ- 
ence. Kidnapping  had  become  common  in  Bristol;  and 
not  felons  only,  but  young  persons  and  others,  were 
hurried  across  the  Atlantic  and  sold  for  money.  At 
Bristol,  the  mayor  and  justices  would  intimidate  small 
rogues  and  pilferers,  who,  under  the  terror  of  being  hanged, 
prayed  for  transportation  as  the  only  avenue  to  safety,  and 
were  then  divided  among  the  members  of  the  court.  The 
trade  was  exceedingly  profitable,  —  far  more  so  than  the 


1683.  MARYLAND.  15 

slave-trade,  —  and  had  been  conducted  for  years.  By  ac- 
cident it  came  to  the  knowledge  of  Jeffries,  who  delighted 
in  a  fair  opportunity  to  rant.  Finding  that  the  aldermen, 
justices,  and  the  mayor  himself  were  concerned  in  this  sort 
of  man-stealing,  he  turned  to  the  mayor,  who  was  sitting  on 
the  bench,  bravely  arrayed  in  scarlet  and  furs,  and  gave 
him  every  ill  name  which  scolding  eloquence  could  devise. 
Nor  would  he  desist  till  he  made  the  scarlet  chief  magistrate 
of  the  city  go  down  to  the  criminal's  post  at  the  bar,  and 
plead  for  himself  as  a  common  rogue  would  have  done. 
The  prosecutions  depended  till  the  revolution,  which  made 
an  amnesty;  and  the  judicial  kidnappers,  retaining  their 
gains,  suffered  nothing  beyond  disgrace  and  terror. 

Virginia   ceased  for  a  season  to  be  the  favorite  resort 
of  voluntary  emigrants.     Men  were  attracted  to  the  New 
World  by  the  spirit  of  enterprise  and  the  love  of  freedom. 
In  Virginia,  industry  was  depressed  and  the  royal  authority 
severe.     The  presence  of  a  frigate  had  sharpened  the  zeal 
of  the  royal  officers  in  enforcing  the  acts  of  naviga- 
tion.    The  new  tax  in  England,  on  the  consumption       1685. 
of  tobacco,  was  injurious  to  the  producer.     Culpepper 
and  his  council  had  arraigned  a  printer  for  publishing  ^Ih^lis. 
the  laws,  and  ordered  him  to  print  nothing  till  the 
king's  pleasure  should  be  known.     And  Effingham  was  the 
bearer  of  the  royal  pleasure ;  having  received  the  express 
instruction  to  allow  no  printing-press  on  any  pretence  what- 
ever.     The   rule   was   continued   under  James    II.      The 
methods  of  despotism  are  monotonous. 

To  perfect  the  system,  Effingham  established  a  chancery 
court,  in  which  he  himself  was  chancellor.  The  councillors 
might  advise,  but  were  without  a  vote.  An  arbitrary  table 
of  fees  followed  of  course.  This  is  the  period  when  royal 
authority  was  at  its  height  in  Virginia.  The  executive,  the 
council,  the  judges,  the  sheriffs,  the  county  commissioners, 
and  local  magistrates,  were  all  appointed  directly  or  in- 
directly by  the  crown.  Virginia  had  no  town-meetings,  no 
village  democracies,  no  free  municipal  institutions.  The 
custom  of  a  colonial  assembly  remained,  but  it  was  chosen 
under  a  restricted  franchise ;   its  most   confidential  officer 


1^  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXL 

1686.  "^^s  ordered  to  be  appointed  by  the  governor,  and 
Aug.  1.  i^g  power  over  the  revenue  was  impaired  by  the  per- 
manent gi-ant  which  it  could  not  recall.  The  indulgence 
of  liberty  of  conscience,  and  the  enfranchisement  of  papists, 
"Were  in  themselves  unexceptionable  measures ;  they  could 
bring  no  detriment  to  colonial  liberties  ;  yet  toleration  itself 
was  suspected  in  King  James,  as  a  device  to  restore  domin- 
ion "  to  popery."  The  year  after  Bacon's  rebellion,  when 
the  royal  commissioners  forcibly  seized  the  records  of  the 
assembly,  the  act  had  been  voted  "  a  violation  of  privilege," 
"  an  outrage  never  practised  by  the  kings  of  Eng- . 
1678.  land,"  and  "  never  to  be  offered  in  future."  When 
the  records  were  again  demanded,  that  this  resolution 
might  be  expunged,  Beverley,  the  clerk  of  the  house,  refused 
obedience  to  the  lieutenant-governor  and  council,  saying  he 
might  not  do  it  without  leave  of  the  burgesses,  his  masters. 
In  1685,  the  first  assembly  convened  after  the  accession 
of  James  II.  questioned  a  part  of  his  negative  power. 
Former  laws  had  been  repealed  by  the  assembly ;  the  king 
negatived  the  repeal,  w^hich  necessarily  revived  the  earlier 
law.  It  marks  the  determined  spirit  of  the  colonists,  and 
their  rapid  tendency  towards  demanding  self-government 
as  a  natural  right,  that  the  assembly  obstinately  refused  to 
acknowledge  this  exercise  of  prerogative,  and  brought  upon 
themselves,  from  King  James,  a  censure  of  their  "  unneces- 
sary debates  and  contests  touching  the  negative  voice," 
"the  disaffected  and  unquiet  disposition  of  the  members, 
and  their  irregular  and  tumultuous  proceedings." 
Nov^^is.  '^^®  assembly  was  dissolved  by  royal  proclamation. 
James  Collins  was  imprisoned  and  loaded  with 
ApS\  irons  for  treasonable  expressions.  The  servile  coun- 
cil pledged  to  the  king  their  lives  and  fortunes,  but 
the  people  were  more  intractable  than  ever.  The  indomi- 
table spirit  of  personal  independence,  nourished  by  the 
manners  of  rural  life,  could  never  be  repressed.  Unlike 
ancient  Rome,  Virginia  placed  the  defence  of  liberty  not  in 
municipal  corporations,  but  in  persons.  The  liberty  of  the 
individual  was  ever  highly  prized ;  and  freedom  sheltered 
itself  in  the  collected  energy  of  the  public  mind.      Such 


1667.  MARYLAND.  17 


April. 


was  the  character  of  the  new  assembly  which  was 
convened  some  months  before  the  British  revolution. 
The  turbulent  spirit  of  the  burgesses  was  greater 
than  ever,  and  an  immediate  dissolution  of  the  body  seemed 
to  the  council  the  only  mode  of  counteracting  their  influ- 
ence. But  the  awakened  spirit  of  free  discussion,  banished 
from  the  hall  of  legislation,  fled  for  refuge  among  the  log 
houses  and  plantations  that  were  sprinkled  along  the  streams. 
The  people  ran  to  arms  :  general  discontent  threatened  an 
insurrection.  The  governor,  in  a  new  country,  without 
soldiers  and  without  a  citadel,  was  compelled  to  practise 
moderation.  Tyranny  was  impossible  ;  it  had  no  powerful 
instruments.  When  the  prerogative  of  the  governor  was 
at  its  height,  he  was  still  too  feeble  to  oppress  the  colony. 
Virginia  was  always  "  a  land  of  liberty." 

Nor  let  the  first  tendencies  to  union  pass  unnoticed.  In 
the  Bay  of  the  Chesapeake,  Smith  had  encountered  warriors 
of  the  Five  Nations ;  and  others  had  fearlessly  roamed  to 
the  shores  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  and  even  invaded  the  soil 
of  Maine.  Some  years  before  Philip's  war,  the 
Mohawks  committed  ravages  near  Northampton,  on  i667. 
Connecticut  River ;  and  the  general  court  of  Mas- 
sachusetts addressed  them  a  letter  :  "  We  never  yet  did 
any  wrong  to  you,  or  any  of  yours,"  such  was  the  language 
of  the  Puritan  diplomatists,  "  neither  will  we  take  any  from 
you,  but  will  right  our  people  according  to  justice."  In 
1677  Maryland  invited  Virginia  to  join  with  itself  and  with 
New  York  in  a  treaty  of  peace  with  the  Seneca  Indians, 
and  in  the  month  of  August  a  conference  was  held  with  that 
tribe  at  Albany.  In  July,  1684,  the  governor  of  Virginia 
and  of  New  York,  and  the  agent  of  Massachusetts,  met  the 
sachems  of  the  Five  Nations  at  Albany,  to  strengthen  and 
burnish  the  covenant-chain,  and  plant  the  tree  of  peace,  of 
which  the  top  should  reach  the  sun,  and  the  branches  shel- 
ter the  wide  land.  The  treaty  extended  from  the  St.  Croix 
to  Albemarle.  New  York  was  the  bond  of  New  England 
and  Virginia.  The  north  and  the  south  were  united  by  the 
acquisition  of  New  Netherland. 


18  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 


CHAPTER    XXIL 


]SrEW    NETHERLAND. 


The  spirit  of  the  age  was  present  when  the  foundations 
of  Kew  York  were  laid.  Every  great  European  event 
affected  the  fortunes  of  America.  Did  a  state  prosper,  it 
sought  an  increase  of  wealth  by  plantations  in  the  west. 
Was  a  sect  persecuted,  it  escaped  to  the  New  World.  The 
Reformation,  followed  by  collisions  between  English  dis- 
senters and  the  Anglican  hierarchy,  colonized  New  England ; 
the  Reformation,  emancipating  the  Low  Countries,  led  to 
settlements  on  the  Hudson.  The  Netherlands  divide  with 
England  the  glory  of  having  planted  the  first  colonies  in 
the  United  States  ;  they  also  divide  the  glory  of  having 
set  the  example  of  public  freedom.  If  England  gave  our 
fathers  the  idea  of  a  popular  representation,  the  united 
provinces  were  their  model  of  a  federal  union. 

At  the  discovery  of  America,  the  Netherlands  possessed 
the  municipal  institutions  which  had  survived  the  wreck  of 
the  Roman  world  and  the  feudal  liberties  of  the  middle 
ages.  The  landed  aristocracy,  the  hierarchy,  and  the  mu- 
nicipalities exercised  political  franchises.  The  municipal 
officers,  in  part  appointed  by  the  sovereign,  in  part  perpetu- 
ating themselves,  had  common  interests  with  the  indus- 
trious citizens,  from  whom  they  were  selected ;  and  the 
nobles,  cherishing  the  feudal  right  of  resisting  arbitrary 
taxation,  joined  the  citizens  in  defending  national  liberty 
against  encroachments. 

The  urgencies  of  war,  the  Reformation,  perhaps 

1517  to    also  the  arrogance  of  power,  often  tempted  Charles  V. 

to   violate    the    constitutions   of    the    Netherlands ; 

Philip  IL,  on  his  accession  in  1559,  formed  the  deliberate 

purpose  of   subverting  them,   and   found  a  willing   coad- 


1555.  NEW  NETHERLAND. 


19 


jutor  in  the  prelates.  During  the  middle  age  the  church 
was  the  sole  guardian  of  the  people  ;  and  its  political  influ- 
ence rested  on  gratitude  towards  the  order  which  limited 
arbitrary  power  by  invoking  the  truths  of  religion,  and 
opened  to  plebeian  ambition  the  highest  distinctions.  In 
the  progress  of  society,  the  ward  was  become  of  age,  and 
could  protect  its  rights ;  the  guardian  had  fulfilled  its  ofiice, 
and  might  now  resign  its  supremacy.  But  the  Roman 
hierarchy,  rigidly  asserting  authority,  refused  to  submit 
belief  to  the  test  of  inquiry,  and  struggled  to  establish  a 
spiritual  despotism  :  the  sovereigns  of  Europe,  equally  re- 
fusing to  subject  their  administrations  to  discussion,  aimed 
at  absolute  dominion  in  the  state.  A  new  political  alliance 
was  the  consequence.  The  Catholic  priesthood  and  the 
temporal  sovereigns,  during  the  middle  age  so  often  and  so 
bitterly  opposed,  entered  into  a  natural  and  necessary  friend- 
ship. By  increasing  the  number  of  bishops,  who,  in  riglit 
of  their  ofiice,  had  a  voice  in  the  -states,  Philip  II.,  in  1559, 
destroyed  the  balance  of  the  constitution. 

Thus  the  power  of  the  sovereign  sought  to  crush  inher- 
ited privileges.  Patriotism  and  hope  animated  the  prov- 
inces; despotism  and  bigotry  were  on  the  side  of  Philip. 
We  have  witnessed  the  sanguinary  character  of  the  Spanish 
system  at  St.  Augustine ;  we  are  now  to  trace  the  feudal 
liberties  of  the  Netherlands  to  the  Isle  of  Manhattan. 

The  contest  in  the  Low  Countries  was  one  of  the  most 
memorable  in  the  history  of  the  human  race.  All  classes 
were  roused  to  opposition.  The  nobles  framed  a  solemn 
petition  ;  the  common  people  broke  in  pieces  the  images 
that  filled  the  churches.  Despotism  then  seized  possession 
of  the  courts,  and  invested  a  commission  with  arbitrary 
power  over  life  and  property ;  to  overawe  the  burghers,  the 
citadels  were  filled  with  mercenary  soldiers ;  to  strike  terror 
into  the  nobility,  Egmont  and  Horn  were  executed.  Men 
fled;  but  whither?  The  village,  the  city,  the  court,  the 
camp,  were  held  by  the  tyrant ;  the  fugitive  had  no  asylum 
but  the  ocean. 

The  establishment  of  subservient  courts  was  followed  by 
arbitrary  taxation.     But  feudal  liberty  forbade  taxation 


20  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXH. 

except  by  consent ;  and  the  levying  of  the  tenth  penny 
excited  more  commotion  than  the  tribunal  of  blood.  Mer- 
chant and  landholder,  citizen  and  peasant,  Catholic  and  Prot- 
estant, were  ripe  for  insurrection  ;  and  even  with  foreign 

troops  Alba  vainly  attempted  to  enforce  taxation  with- 
1572.       out  representation.    Just  then,  in  April,  1572,  a  party 

of  the  fugitive  "  beggars  "  succeeded  in  gaining  the 
harbor  of  Briel ;  and,  in  July  of  the  same  year,  the  states  of 

Holland,  creating  the  Prince  of  Orange  their  stad- 

1575.  holder,  prepared  to  levy  money  and  troops.  In  1575 
Zealand  joined  with  Holland  in  demanding  for  free- 
dom some  better  safeguard  than  the  word  of  Philip  II., 

1576.  and  in  November  of  the  following  year  nearly  all  the 
provinces  united  to  drive  foreign  troops  from  their 

soil.      "  The  spirit  that  animates  them,"  said    Sidney  to 

Queen  Elizabeth,  "  is  the  spirit  of  God,  and  is  invincible." 

The  particular  union  of  five  northern  provinces  at 

1579.       Utrecht,  in  Januar-y,  1579,  perfected  the  insurrection 

by  forming  the  basis  of  a  sovereignty  ;  and,  when 
their  ablest  chiefs  were  put  under  the  ban,  and  a  price 
offered  for  the  assassination  of  the  Prince  of  Orange,  the 

deputies  in  the  assembly  at  the  Hague,  on  the  twenty- 
juiy^26.  sixth  of   July,   1581,  making  few  changes  in  their 

ancient  laws,  declared  their  independence  by  abjur- 
ing their  king.  "  The  prince,"  said  they,  in  their  manifesto, 
"  is  made  for  the  subjects,  without  whom  there  would  be  no 
prince ;  and  if,  instead  of  protecting  them,  he  seeks  to  take 
from  them  their  old  freedom  and  use  them  as  slaves,  he 
must  be  holden  not  a  prince,  but  a  tyrant,  and  may  justly 
be  deposed  by  the  authority  of  the  state."  A  rude  structure 
of  a  commonwealth  was  the  unpremeditated  result  of  the 
revolution. 

The  republic  of  the  United  Netherlands  was  by  its  origin 
and  its  nature  commercial.  The  device  on  an  early  Dutch 
coin  was  a  ship  laboring  on  the  billows  without  oar  or  sails. 
The  rendezvous  of  its  martyrs  had  been  the  sea ;  the  muster 
of  its  patriot  emigrants  had  been  on  shipboard ;  and  they 
had  hunted  their  enemy,  as  the  whale-ships  pursue  their 
game,  in  every  corner  of  the  ocean.     The  two  leading  mem- 


1581.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  21 

bers  of  the  confederacy,  from  their  situation,  could  seek 
subsistence  only  on  the  water.  Holland  is  but  a  peninsula, 
intersected  by  navigable  rivers ;  protruding  itself  into  the 
sea ;  crowded  with  a  dense  population  on  a  soil  saved  from 
the  deep  by  embankments,  and  kept  dry  only  with  pumps 
driven  by  windmills.  Its  houses  were  rather  in  the  water 
than  on  land. 

And  Zealand  is  composed  of  islands.  Its  inhabitants 
were  nearly  all  fishermen  ;  its  villages  were  as  nests  of  sea- 
fowl,  on  the  margin  of  the  ocean.  In  both  provinces  every 
house  was  by  nature  a  nursery  of  sailors  ;  the  sport  of  chil- 
dren was  among  the  breakers  ;  their  boyish  pastimes  in 
boats ;  and,  if  their  first  excursions  were  but  voyages  to 
some  neighboring  port,  they  soon  braved  the  dangers  of 
every  sea.  The  states  advanced  to  sudden  opulence  ;  before 
the  insurrection,  they  could  with  difficulty  keep  their  em- 
bankments in  repair ;  and  now  they  were  able  to  support 
large  fleets  and  armies.  Their  commerce  gathered  into 
their  harbors  the  fruits  of  the  wide  world.  Producing 
almost  no  grain  of  any  kind,  Holland  had  the  best-supplied 
granary  of  Europe ;  without  fields  of  flax,  it  swarmed  with 
weavers  of  linen  ;  destitute  of  flocks,  it  became  the  centre 
of  all  woollen  manufactures  ;  and  provinces  which  had  not  a 
forest  built  more  ships  than  all  Europe  besides.  They  con- 
nected hemispheres.  Their  enterprising  mariners  displayed 
the  flag  of  the  republic  from  Southern  Africa  to  the  arctic 
circle.  The  ships  of  the  Dutch,  said  Raleigh,  outnumber 
those  of  England  and  ten  other  kingdoms.  To  the  Italian 
cardinal  the  number  seemed  infinite.  Amsterdam  was  the 
centre  of  the  commerce  of  Europe.  The  sea  not  only 
bathed  its  walls,  but  flowed  through  its  streets ;  and  its 
merchantmen  lay  so  crowded  together  that  the  beholder 
from  the  ramparts  could  not  look  through  the  thick  forests 
of  masts  and  yards.  War  for  liberty  became  unexpectedly 
a  well-spring  of  opulence  ;  Holland  plundered  the  commerce 
of  Spain  by  its  maritime  force,  and  supplanted  its  rivals  in 
the  gainful  traffic  with  the  Indies.  Lisbon  and  Antwerp 
were  despoiled ;  Amsterdam,  the  depot  of  the  merchandise 
of  Europe  and  of  the  east,  was  become  beyond  dispute  the 


22  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXII. 

first  commercial  city  of  the  world  ;  the  Tyre  of  modern 
times ;  the  Venice  of  the  north  ;  the  queen  of  all  the  seas. 
In  1581,  the  year  after  Portugal  had  been  forcibly 

annexed  to  Spain  and  the  Portuguese  settlements  in 
Asia  were  become  for  a  season  Spanish  provinces,  the  epoch 
of  the  independence  of  the  Netherlands,  Thomas  Buts,  an 
Englishman  who  had  five  times  crossed  the  Atlantic,  offered 
to  the  states  to  conduct  four  ships-of-war  to  America.     The 

adventure  was  declined  by  the  government ;  but  no 
1591.       obstacles  were  offered   to   private    enterprise.     Ten 

years  afterwards,  William  Usselinx,  who  had  lived 
some  years  in  Castile,  Portugal,  and  the  Azores,  proposed  a 
West  India  company ;  but  the  dangers  of  the  undertaking 
were  still  too  appalling. 

In  1594  the  port  of  Lisbon  was  closed  by  the  king 

of  Spain  against  the  Low  Countries.  Their  carrying 
trade  in  Indian  goods  was  lost,  unless  their  ships  could  pen- 
etrate to  the  seas  of  Asia.  A  company  of  merchants, 
believing  that  the  coast  of  Siberia  fell  away  to  the  south- 
east, hoped  to  shorten  the  voyage  at  least  eight  thousand 
miles  by  using  a  north-eastern  route.  A  double  expedition 
was  sent  forth  on  discovery ;  two  fly-boats  vainly  tried  to 
pass  through  the  Straits  of  Yeigatz,  while,  in  a  large  ship, 
William  Barentsen,  whom  Grotius  honored  as  the  peer  of 
Columbus,  coasted  Nova  Zembla  to  the  seventy-seventh 
degree,  without  finding  a  passage. 

Netherlanders   in   the    service  of   Portugal   had   visited 

India,  Malacca,  China,  and  even  Japan.     Qf  these, 

1595.  Cornelius  Houtman  in  April,  1595,  sailed  for  India 
by  way  of  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  before  his 

return  circumnavigated  Java.  In  the  same  year,  Jacob 
van  Heemskerk,  the  great  mariner  and  naval  hero,  aided  by 
Barentsen,  renewed  the  search  on  the  north-east,  but  at- 
tempted in  vain  to  pass  to  the  south  of  Nova  Zembla.  The 
republic,  disheartened  by  the  repeated  failure,  refused  to 
fit  out  another  expedition ;  but  the  city  of  Amster- 

1596.  dam,  in   1596,  despatched  two  ships  under  Heems- 
kerk and  Barentsen  to  look  for  the  open  sea,  which, 

it  had  been  said,  was  to  be  found  to  the  north  of  all  known 


1602.  NEW  NETHEHLAND.  23 

land.  Braver  men  never  battled  with  arctic  dangers  ;  they 
discovered  the  jagged  cliffs  of  Spitzbergen,  and  came  within 
ten  degrees  of  the  pole.  Then  Barentsen  sought  to  go 
round  Nova  Zembla,  and,  when  his  ship  was  hopelessly- 
enveloped  by  ice,  had  the  courage  to  encamp  his  crew  on 
the  desolate  northern  shore  of  the  island,  and  cheer  them 
during  a  winter,  rendered  horrible  by  famine,  cold,  and  tlie 
fierce  attacks  of  huge  white  bears,  whom  hunger  had  mad- 
dened. When  spring  came,  the  gallant  company,  travers- 
ing more  than  sixteen  hundred  miles  in  two  open  boats, 
were  tossed  for  three  months  by  storms  and  among  icebergs, 
before  they  could  reach  the  shelter  of  the  White  Sea.  Bar- 
entsen sunk  under  his  trials,  but  was  engaged  in  poring  over 
a  sea-chart  as  he  died.  The  expeditions  of  the  Dutch  were 
without  a  parallel  for  daring. 

It  was  not  till  1597  that  voyages  were  undertaken       1597. 
from  Holland  to  America.     In  that  year,  Bikker  of 
Amsterdam,  and  Leyen  of  Enkhuisen,  each  formed  a  com- 
pany to  traffic  with  the  West  Indies.     The  commerce  was 
continued  with  success  ;  but  Asia  had  greater  attrac- 
tions.     In   1598,  two-and-twenty  ships    sailed  from       1598. 
Dutch   harbors  for  the  Indian   seas,  in  part  by  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope,  in  part  through  the  Straits  of 
Magellan.     When  in  1600,  after  years  of  discussion,       leoo. 
a  plan  for  a  West  India  company  was  reduced  to 
writing,  and  communicated  to  the  states-general,  it  was  not 
adopted,  though  its  principle  was  approved. 

But  the  zeal  of  merchants  and  of  statesmen  was  concen- 
tred on  the  east,  where  jealousy  of  the  Portuguese  inclined 
the  native  princes  and  peoples  to  welcome  the  Dutch 
as  allies  and  protectors.  In  March,  1602,  by  the  pre-  I602. 
vailing  influence  of  Olden  Barneveldt,  the  advocate 
of  Holland,  the  Dutch  East  India  company  was  chartered 
with  the  exclusive  right  to  commerce  beyond  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope  on  the  one  side,  and  beyond  the  Straits  of 
Magellan  on  the  other.  The  states,  unwilling  to  pledge 
themselves  to  the  chances  of  war,  granted  all  powers  requi- 
site for  conquests,  colonization,  and  government.  In  the 
age  of  feudalism,  privileged  bodies  formed  the  balance  of 


24  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXH. 

the  commercial  and  manufacturing  interests  against  the 
aristocracy  of  the  sword,  and  suited  the  genius  of  the  re- 
public. The  Dutch  East  India  company  is  the  first  in  the 
series  of  great  European  trading  corporations,  and  became 
the  model  for  those  of  France  and  England. 

As  years  rolled  away,  the  progress  of  English  commerce 
in  the  west  awakened  the  attention  of  the  Netherlands. 
England  and  Holland  had  been  allies  in  the  contest  against 
Spain ;  had  both  spread  their  sails  on  the  Indian  seas  ;  had 
both  become  competitors  for  possessions  in  Araer- 
1607.  ica.  In  the  same  year  in  which  Smith  embarked  for 
Virginia,  vast  designs  were  ripening  among  the 
Dutch ;  and  Grotius,  himself  of  the  commission  to  which 
the  affair  was  referred,  acquaints  us  with  the  opinions 
of  his  countrymen.  The  United  Provinces,  it  was  said, 
abounded  in  mariners  and  in  unemployed  capital :  not  the 
plunder  of  Spanish  commerce,  not  India  itself,  America 
alone,  so  rich  in  herbs  of  healing  virtues,  in  forests,  and  in 
precious  ores,  could  exhaust  their  enterprise.  Their  mer- 
chants had  perused  every  w^ork  on  the  Western  World,  had 
gleaned  intelligence  from  the  narratives  of  sailors ;  and  now 
they  planned  a  privileged  company,  which  should  count 
the  states-general  among  its  stockholders,  and  possess  ex- 
clusively the  liberty  of  approaching  America  from  New- 
foundland to  the  Straits  of  Magellan,  and  Africa  from  the 
tropics  to  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope.  The  Spaniards  are 
feeblest,  it  was  confidently  urged,  where  they  are  believed 
to  be  strongest ;  there  would  be  no  war  but  on  the.  water, 
the  home  of  the  ^atavians.  It  would,  moreover,  be  glori- 
ous to  bear  Christianity  to  the  heathen,  and  rescue  them 
from  their  oppressors.  Principalities  might  easily  be  won 
from  the  Spaniards,  whose  scattered  citadels  protected  but 
a  narrow  zone. 

To  the  eagerness  of  enterprise,  it  was  replied  that  war 
had  its  uncertain  events,  the  sea  its  treacheries ;  the  Span- 
iards would  learn  naval  warfare  by  exercise ;  and  the  little 
fleets  of  the  provinces  could  hardly  blockade  an  ocean  or 
battle  for  a  continent ;  the  costs  of  defence  would  exceed 
the  public  resources ;  home  would  be  lost  in  the  search  for 


1609.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  25 

a  foreign  world,  of  which  the  air  breathed  pestilence,  the 
natives  were  cannibals,  the  unoccupied  regions  were  hope- 
lessly wild.  The  party  that  desired  peace  with  Spain,  and 
counted  Grotius  and  Olden  Barneveldt  among  its  leaders, 
for  a  long  time  succeeded  in  defeating  every  effort  at  Bata- 
vian  settlements  in  the  west. 

While  the  negotiations  with  Spain  postponed  the  forma- 
tion of  a  West  India  company,  the  Dutch  found  their  way 
to  the  United  States  through  another  channel. 

In  1607,  a  company  of  London  merchants,  excited  by  the 
immense  profits  of  voyages  to  the  east,  contributed  the 
means  for  a  new  attempt  to  discover  the  near  passage  to 
Asia ;  and  Henry  Hudson,  an  Englishman  by  birth,  was 
the  chosen  leader  of  the  expedition.  With  his  only  son  for 
his  companion,  he  coasted  the  shores  of  Greenland,  and  hesi- 
tated whether  to  attempt  the  circumnavigation  of  that 
country  or  the  passage  across  the  north.  He  came  nearer 
the  pole  than  any  earlier  navigator ;  but,  after  he  had  re- 
newed the  discovery  of  Spitzbergen,  vast  masses  of  ice 
compelled  his  return. 

The  next  year  beheld  Hudson  once  more   on   a       leos. 
voyage,  to  ascertain  if  the  seas  which  divide  Spitz- 
bergen from  Nova  Zembla  open  a  path  to  China. 

The  failure  of  two  expeditions  daunted  Hudson's  1609. 
employers ;  they  could  not  daunt  the  great  navigator. 
The  discovery  of  the  passage  was  the  desire  of  his  life ; 
and,  repairing  to  Holland,  he  offered  his  services  to  the 
Dutch  East  India  company.  The  Zealanders,  disheartened 
by  former  ill-success,  made  objections  ;  but  they  were  over- 
ruled by  the  directors  for  Amsterdam  ;  and  on  the  fourth 
day  of  April,  1609,  five  days  before  the  truce  with  Spain, 
the  "  Half  Moon,"  a  yacht  of  about  eighty  tons'  burden, 
commanded  by  Hudson  and  manned  by  a  mixed  crew  of 
Ketherlanders  and  Englishmen,  his  son  being  of  the  num- 
ber, set  sail  for  China  by  way  of  the  north-east.  On  the 
fifth  day  of  May  he  had  attained  the  height  of  the  north 
cape  of  Norway ;  but  fogs  and  fields  of  ice  near  Nova 
Zembla  closed  against  him  the  Straits  of  Veigatz.  Remem- 
bering the  late  accounts  from  Virginia,  Hudson,  with  prompt 


26  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 

decision,  turned  to  the  west,  to  look  for  some  opening  north 
of  the  Chesapeake.  On  the  thirtieth  of  May  he  took  in 
water  at  the  Faroe  Isles,  and  in  June  was  on  the  track  of 
Frobisher.  Early  in  July,  with  foremast  carried  away  and 
canvas  rent  in  a  gale,  he  found  himself  among  fishermen 
from  France  on  the  Banks  of  Newfoundland.  On  the 
eighteenth  he  entered  a  very  good  harbor  on  the  coast  of 
Maine,  mended  his  sails,  and  refitted  his  ship  with  a  fore- 
mast from  the  woods.  On  the  fourth  of  August,  a  boat 
was  sent  on  shore  at  the  headland  which  Gosnold  seven 
years  before  had  called  Cape  Cod,  and  which  was  now 
named  Kew  Holland;  and  on  the  eighteenth  of  August 
the  "  Half  Moon "  rode  at  sea  off  the  Chesapeake  Bay, 
which  was  known  to  be  the  entrance  to  the  river  of  King 
James  in  Virginia.  Here  Hudson  changed  his  course.  On 
the  twenty-eighth  he  entered  the  great  bay,  now  known  as 
Delaware,  and  gave  one  day  to  its  rivers,  its  currents  and 
soundings,  and  the  aspect  of  the  country.  Then,  sailing  to 
the  north  along  the  low  sandy  coast  that  appeared 
Igp^t*  like  broken  islands  in  the  surf,  on  the  second  of  Sep- 
tember he  was  attracted  by  the  "  pleasant  sight 
of  the  high  hills"  of  Navesink.  On  the  following  day, 
as  he  approached  the  "bold"  land,  three  separate  rivers 
seemed  to  be  in  sight.  He  stood  towards  the  northernmost, 
which  was  probably  Rockaway  Inlet;  but,  finding  only  ten 
feet  of  water  on  its  bar,  he  cast  about  to  the  southward, 
and,  almost  at  the  time  when  Champlain  was  invading  New 
York  from  the  north,  he  sounded  his  way  to  an  anchorage 
within  Sandy  Hook. 

On  the  fourth,  the  ship  went  further  up  the  Horse  Shoe 
to  a  very  good  harbor  near  the  New  Jersey  shore  ;  and  that 
same  day  the  people  of  the  countrj"  came  on  board  to  traffic 
for  knives  and  beads.  On  the  fifth,  a  landing  was  made 
from  the  "  Half  Moon."  When  Hudson  stepped  on  shore, 
the  natives  stood  round  and  sang  in  their  fashion.  Men, 
women,  and  children  were  feather-mantled,  or  clad  in  loose 
furs.  Their  food  was  Indian  corn,  which,  when  roasted, 
was  pronounced  to  be  excellent.  They  always  carried  with 
them  maize  and  tobacco.     Some  had  pipes  of  red  copper, 


1609.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  27 

with  earthen  bowls  and  copper  ornaments  round  their  necks. 
Their  boats  were  made  each  of  a  single  hollowed  tree. 
Their  weapons  were  bows  and  arrows,  pointed  with  sharp 
stones.  They  slept  abroad  on  mats  of  bulrushes  or  on  the 
leaves  of  trees.  They  were  friendly,  but  thievish,  and 
crafty  in  carrying  away  what  they  fancied.  The  woods,  it 
was  specially  noticed,  abounded  in  "  goodly  oakes,"  and  from 
that  day  the  new  comers  never  ceased  to  admire  the  great 
size  of  the  trees. 

On  the  sixth,  John  Colman  and  four  others,  in  a  1609. 
boat,  sounded  the  Narrows,  and  passed  through  Kill  ^^^^- 
van  Kull  to  Newark  Bay.  The  air  was  very  sweet,  and 
the  land  as  pleasant  with  grass  and  flowers  and  trees  as 
they  had  ever  seen ;  but,  on  the  return,  the  boat  was  at- 
tacked by  two  canoes,  and  Colman  killed  by  an  arrow. 

On  Wednesday  the  ninth,  Hudson  moved  cautiously 
from  the  lower  bay  into  the  Narrows  ;  and  on  the  eleventh, 
by  aid  of  a  very  light  wind,  he  went  into  the  great  river  of 
the  north,  and  rode  all  night  in  a  harbor,  which  was  safe 
against  every  wind. 

On  the  morning  of  the  twelfth,  the  natives,  in  eight-and 
twenty  canoes,  crowded  about  him,  bringing  beans  and 
very  good  oysters.  The  day  was  fair  and  warm,  though 
the  light  wind  was  from  the  north ;  and  as  Hudson,  under 
the  brightest  autumnal  sun,  gazed  around,  having  behind 
him  the  Narrows  opening  to  the  ocean,  before  him  the  noble 
stream  flowing  from  above  Weehawken  with  a  broad,  deep 
channel  between  forest-crowned  palisades  and  the  gently 
swelling  banks  of  Manhattan,  he  made  a  record  that  "  it 
was  as  fair  a  land  as  can  be  trodden  by  the  foot  of  man." 
That  night  he  anchored  just  above  Manhattan ville.  The 
flood-tide  of  the  next  morning  and  of  evening  brought  him 
near  Yonkers.  On  the  fourteenth,  a  strong  south-east  wind 
wafted  him  rapidly  into  the  Highlands. 

At  daybreak,  on  the  fifteenth,  mists  hung  over  the  land- 
scape ;  but,  as  they  rose,  the  sun  revealed  the  neighborhood 
of  West  Point.  With  a  south  wind  the  "  Half  Moon  "  soon 
emerged  from  the  mountains  that  rise  near  the  water's 
edge;    sweeping  upwards,  it   passed  the   elbow  at   Hyde 


28  COLONIAL   HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 

Park,  and  at  night  anchored  a  little  below  Red  Hook, 
within  the  shadow  of  the  majestic  Catskill  range,  which  it 
was  noticed  stands  at  a  distance  from  the  river. 

Trafficking  with  the  natives,  who  were  "  very  loving," 

taking  in  fresh  water,  grounding  at  low  tide  on  a  shoal, 
gg^j.'^      the  Netherlanders,  on  the  evening  of  the  seventeenth, 

reached  no  higher  than  the  latitude  of  about  forty-two 
degrees  eighteen  minutes,  just  above  the  present  city  of  Hud- 
son. The  next  day  Hudson  went  on  shore  in  one  of  the  boats 
of  the  natives  with  an  aged  chief  of  a  small  tribe  of  the  River 
Indians.  He  was  taken  to  a  house  well  constructed  of  oak 
bark,  circular  in  shape,  and  arched  in  the  roof,  the  granary 
of  the  beans  and  maize  of  the  last  year's  harvest ;  while  out- 
side enough  of  them  lay  drying  to  load  three  ships.  Two 
mats  were  spread  out  as  seats  for  the  strangers ;  food  was 
immediately  served  in  neat  red  wooden  bowls ;  men,  who 
were  sent  at  once  with  bows  and  arrows  for  game,  soon  re- 
turned with  pigeons ;  a  fat  dog,  too,  was  killed ;  and  haste 
made  to  prepare  a  feast.  When  Hudson  refused  to  wait, 
they  supposed  him  to  be  afraid  of  their  weapons  ;  and,  tak- 
ing their  arrows,  they  broke  them  in  pieces  and  threw  them 
into  the  fire.  The  country  was  pleasant  and  fruitful,  bear- 
ing wild  grapes.  "Of  all  lands  on  which  I  ever  set  my 
foot,"  says  Hudson,  "this  is  the  best  for  tillage."  The 
River  Indians,  for  more  than  a  century,  preserved  the 
memory  of  his  visit. 

The  "  Half  Moon,"  on  the  nineteenth,  drew  near  the 
landing  of  Kinderhook,  where  the  Indians  brought  on  board 
skins  of  beaver  and  otter.  Hudson  ventured  no  higher  with 
the  yacht ;  an  exploring  boat  ascended  a  little  above  Albany 
to  where  the  river  was  but  seven  feet  deep,  and  the  sound- 
ings grew  uncertain. 

So,  on  the  twenty-third,  Hudson  turned  his  prow  towards 
Holland,  leaving  the  friendly  tribes  persuaded  that  the 
Dutch  would  revisit  them  the  next  year.  As  he  went  down 
the  river,  imagination  peopled  the  region  with  towns.  A 
party  which,  somewhere  in  Ulster  county,  went  to  walk 
on  the  west  bank,  found  an  excellent  soil,  with  large  trees 
of  oak  and  walnut  and  chestnut.     The  land  near  Newburg 


1609.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  29 

seemed  a  very  pleasant  site  for  a  city.  On  the  first 
of  October  Hudson  passed  below  the  mountains.  On  ^^^JIJ; 
the  fourth,  not  without  more  than  one  conflict  with 
the  savages,  he  sailed  out  of  "  the  great  mouth  of  the 
GREAT  RIVER  "  whicli  bcars  his  name  ;  and,  about  the  season 
of  the  return  of  John  Smith  from  Virginia  to  England,  he 
steered  for  Europe,  leaving  to  its  solitude  the  beautiful  land 
which  he  admired  beyond  any  country  in  the  world. 

Sombre  forests  shed  a  melancholy  grandeur  over  the 
useless  magnificence  of  nature,  and  hid  in  their  deep  shades 
the  rich  soil  which  no  sun  had  ever  warmed.  No  axe  had 
levelled  the  giant  progeny  of  the  crowded  groves,  in  whicli 
the  fantastic  forms  of  limbs,  withered  or  riven  by  lightning, 
contrasted  strangely  with  the  verdure  of  a  younger  growth 
of  branches.  The  wanton  grape-vine,  fastening  its  leafy 
coils  to  the  top  of  the  tallest  forest  tree,  swung  with  every 
breeze,  like  the  loosened  shrouds  of  a  ship.  Trees  might 
everywhere  be  seen  breaking  from  their  root  in  the  marshy 
soil,  and  threatening  to  fall  with  the  first  rude  gust ;  while 
the  ground  was  strown  with  the  ruins  of  former  woods, 
over  which  a  profusion  of  wild  flowers  wasted  their  fresh- 
ness in  mockery  of  the  gloom.  Reptiles  sported  in  the  stag- 
nant pools,  or  crawled  unharmed  over  piles  of  mouldering 
logs.  The  spotted  deer  couched  among  the  thickets ;  and 
there  were  none  but  wild  animals  to  crop  the  uncut  herbage 
of  the  prairies.  Silence  reigned,  broken,  it  may  have  been, 
by  the  flight  of  land-birds  or  the  flapping  of  water-fowl,  and 
rendered  more  dismal  by  the  howl  of  beasts  of  prey.  The 
streams,  not  yet  limited  to  a  channel,  spread  over  sand-bars, 
tufted  with  copses  of  willow,  or  waded  through  wastes  of 
reeds ;  or  slowly  but  surely  undermined  the  groups  of  syca- 
mores that  grew  by  their  side.  The  smaller  brooks  spread 
out  into  sedgy  swamps,  that  were  overhung  by  clouds  of  mos- 
quitoes ;  masses  of  decaying  vegetation  fed  the  exhalations 
with  the  seeds  of  pestilence,  and  made  the  balmy  air  of  the 
summer's  evening  as  deadly  as  it  seemed  grateful.  Life 
and  death  were  hideously  mingled.  The  horrors  of  cor- 
ruption frowned  on  the  fruitless  fertility  of  uncultivated 
nature. 


30  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 

And  man,  the  occupant  of  the  soil,  was  untamed  as  the 
savage  scene,  in  harmony  with  the  rude  nature  by  which 
he  was  surrounded ;  a  vagrant  over  the  continent,  in  con-' 
stant  warfare  with  his  fellow-man  ;  the  bark  of  the  birch 
his  cano6;  strings  of  shells  his  ornaments,  his  record,  and 
his  coin ;  the  roots  of  uncultivated  plants  among  his  re- 
sources for  food ;  his  knowledge  in  architecture  surpassed 
both  in  strength  and  durability  by  the  skill  of  the  beaver ; 
bended  saplings  the  beams  of  his  house  ;  the  branches  and 
rind  of  trees  its  roof ;  drifts  of  leaves  his  couch  ;  mats  of 
bulrushes  his  protection  against  the  winter's  cold ;  his 
religion  the  adoration  of  nature ;  his  morals  the 
1609.  promptings  of  undisciplined  instinct ;  disputing  with 
the  wolves  and  bears  the  lordship  of  the  soil,  and 
dividing  with  the  squirrel  the  wild  fruits  with  which  the 
universal  woodlands  abounded. 

The  history  of  a  country  is  modified  by  its  climate,  and, 
in  many  of  its  features,  determined  by  its  geographical 
situation.  The  region  which  Hudson  had  discovered  pos- 
sessed near  the  sea  an  unrivalled  harbor ;  a  river  that  admits 
the  tide  far  into  the  interior  on  the  north,  the  chain  of  great 
lakes,  which  have  their  springs  in  the  heart  of  the  continent ; 
within  its  own  limits  the  sources  of  rivers  that  flow  to 
the  Gulfs  of  Mexico  and  St.  Lawrence,  and  to  the  Bays  of 
Chesapeake  and  Delaware  ;  of  which,  long  before  Europeans 
anchored  off  Sandy  Hook,  the  warriors  of  the  Five  Nations 
availed  themselves  in  their  excursions  to  Quebec,  to  the 
Ohio,  or  the  Susquehannah.  With  just  sufficient  difficulties 
to  irritate,  and  not  enough  to  dishearten,  New  York  united 
richest  lands  with  the  highest  adaptation  to  foreign  and 
domestic  commerce. 

How  changed  is  the  scene  from  the  wild  country  on 
which  Hudson  gazed !  The  earth  glows  with  the  colors 
of  civilization  ;  the  meadows  are  enamelled  with  choicest 
grasses  ;  woodlands  and  cultivated  fields  are  harmoniously 
blended ;  the  birds  of  spring  find  their  delight  in  orchards 
and  trim  gardens,  variegated  with  selected  plants  from 
every  temperate  zone ;  while  the  brilliant  flowers  of  the 
tropics  bloom  from  the  windows  of  the  greenhouse  or  mock 


1609.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  31 

at  winter  in  the  saloon.  The  yeoman,  living  like  a  good 
neighbor  near  the  fields  he  cultivates,  glories  in  the  fruit- 
fulness  of  the  valleys,  and  counts  with  honest  exultation 
the  flocks  and  herds  that  browse  in  safety  on  the  hills. 
The  thorn  has  given  way  to  the  rosebush  ;  the  cultivated 
vine  clambers  over  rocks  where  the  brood  of  serpents  used 
to  nestle  ;  while  industry  smiles  at  the  changes  she  has 
wrought,  and  inhales  the  bland  air  which  now  has  health 
on  its  wings. 

And  man  is  still  in  harmony  with  nature,  which  he  has 
subdued,  developed,  and  adorned.  For  him  the  rivers  that 
flow  to  remotest  climes  mingle  their  waters ;  for  him  the 
lakes  gain  new  outlets  to  the  ocean  ;  for  him  the  arch  spans 
the  flood,  and  science  spreads  iron  pathways  to  the  recent 
wilderness ;  for  him  the  hills  yield  up  the  shining  marble 
and  the  enduring  granite ;  for  him  immense  rafts  bring 
down  the  forests  of  the  interior ;  for  him  the  marts  of  the 
city  gather  the  produce  of  all  climes,  and  libraries  collect 
the  works  of  every  language  and  age.  The  passions  of 
society  are  chastened  into  purity ;  manners  are  made  benev- 
olent by  refinement ;  and  the  virtue  of  the  country  is  the 
guardian  of  its  peace.  Science  investigates  the  powers  of 
every  plant  and  mineral,  to  find  medicines  for  disease ; 
schools  of  surgery  rival  the  establishments  of  the  Old 
World ;  the  genius  of  letters  begins  to  unfold  his  powers 
in  the  warm  sunshine  of  public  favor.  An  active  daily 
press,  vigilant  from  party  interests,  free  even  to  dissolute- 
ness, watches  the  progress  of  society,  and  communicates 
every  fact  that  can  interest  humanity ;  and  commerce  pushes 
its  wharfs  into  the  sea,  blocks  up  the  wide  rivers  with  its 
fleets,  and  sends  its  ships,  the  pride  of  naval  architecture, 
to  every  zone. 

A  ha])py  return  voyage  brought  the  "  Half  Moon  " 
into  Dartmouth  on  the  seventh  of  November.  There  I609. 
the  vessel  was  arbitrarily  delayed,  and  the  services  of 
its  commander  and  English  seamen  were  claimed  by  their 
liege.  Hudson  could  only  forward  to  his  employers  an 
account  of  his  discoveries  ;  he  never  again  saw  Holland  or 
the  land  which  he  eulogized. 


32  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXn. 

The  Dutch  East  India  company  refused  to  search 
further  for  the  north-western  passage ;  but  English 
merchants,  renewing  courage,  formed  a  company,  and  Hud- 
son, in  "  The  Discovery,"  engaged  again  in  his  great  pur- 
suit. He  had  already  explored  the  north-east  and  the  north, 
and  the  region  between  the  Chesapeake  and  Maine.  There 
was  no  room  for  hope  but  to  the  north  of  Newfoundland. 
Proceeding  by  way  of  Iceland,  where  "  the  famous  Hecla  " 
was  casting  out  fire,  passing  Greenland  and  Frobisher's 
Straits,  he  sailed  on  the  second  of  August,  1610,  into  the 
straits  which  bear  his  name,  and  into  which  no  one  had 
gone  before  him.  As  he  came  out  from  the  passage  upon 
the  wide  gulf,  he  believed  that  he  beheld  "  a  sea  to  the 
westward,"  so  that  the  short  way  to  the  Pacific  was  found. 
How  great  was  his  disappointment,  when  he  found  himself 
embayed  in  a  labyrinth  without  end.  Still  confident  of 
ultimate  success,  the  determined  mariner  resolved  on  win- 
tering in  the  bay,  that  he  might  perfect  his  discovery  in  the 
spring.  His  crew  murmured  at  the  sufferings  of  a  winter 
for  which  no  preparation  had  been  made.  At  length  the 
late  and  anxiously  expected  spring  burst  forth  ;  but  it 
opened  in  vain  for  Hudson.  Provisions  were  exhausted  ; 
he  divided  the  last  bread  among  his  men,  and  prepared  for 
them  a  bill  of  return  ;  and  "  he  wept  as  he  gave  it  them." 
Believing  himself  almost  on  the  point  of  succeeding,  where 
Spaniards  and  English,  and  Danes  and  Dutch,  had  failed, 
he  left  his  anchoring-place  to  steer  for  Europe.  For  two 
days  the  ship  was  encompassed  by  fields  of  ice,  and  the 
discontent  of  the  crew  broke  forth  into  mutiny.  Hudson 
was  seized,  and,  with  his  only  son  and  seven  others,  four  of 
whom  were  sick,  was  thrown  into  the  shallop.  Seeing  his 
commander  thus  exposed,  Philip  Staffe,  the  carpenter,  de- 
manded and  gained  leave  to  share  his  fate ;  and  just  as  the 
ship  made  its  way  out  of  the  ice,  on  a  midsummer  day,  in 
a  latitude  where  the  sun,  at  that  season,  hardly  goes  down 
and  evening  twilight  mingles  with  the  dawn,  the  shallop 
was  cut  loose.  What  became  of  Hudson  ?  Did  he  die 
miserably  of  starvation  ?  Did  he  reach  land  to  perish  from 
the  fury  of  the  natives  ?    Was  he  crushed  between  ribs  of 


I  UNIVERSITY  1 

1614.       V    ^       ^  NEW  /eTHERLAND.  od 

ice  ?  The  returning  ship  encountered  storms,  by  which  he 
was  probably  overwhelmed.  The  gloomy  waste  of  waters 
which  bears  his  name  is  his  tomb  and  his  monument. 

The  "  Half  Moon,"  having  been  detained  for  many 
months  in  Dartmouth  by  the  jealousy  of  the  English,  did 
not  reach  Amsterdam  till  the  middle  of  July,  1610,  too  late, 
perhaps,  in  the  season  for  the  immediate  equipment  of  a  new 
voyage.  At  least  no  definite  trace  of  a  voyage  to  Manhat- 
tan in  that  year  has  been  discovered.  Besides,  to  avoid  a 
competition  with  England,  the  Dutch  ambassador  at  Lon- 
don, that  same  year,  proposed  a  joint  colonization  of  Vir- 
ginia, as  well  as  a  partnership  in  the  East  India  trade  ; 
but  the  offer  was  put  aside  from  fear  of  the  superior  "  art 
and  industry  of  the  Dutch." 

The  development  of  a  lucrative  fur-trade  in  Hud-  leii. 
son  River  was  therefore  left  to  unprotected  private 
adventure.  In  1613,  or  in  one  of  the  two  previous  years, 
the  experienced  Hendrik  Christiaensen  of  Cleve  "  and  the 
worthy  Adriaen  Block  chartered  a  ship  with  the  skipper 
Ryser,"  and  made  a  voyage  into  the  waters  of  New  York, 
bringing  back  rich  furs,  and  also  two  sons  of  native  sachems. 

The  states-general  still  hesitated  to  charter  a  West  In- 
dia company ;  but  on  the  twenty-seventh  of  March, 
1614,  they  ordained  that  private  adventurers  might  I6i4. 
enjoy  an  exclusive  privilege  for  four  successive  voy- 
ages to  any  passage,  haven,  or  country  they  should  there- 
after find.  With  such  encouragement,  a  company  of 
merchants,  in  the  same  year,  sent  five  small  vessels,  of 
which  the  "  Fortune,"  of  Amsterdam,  had  Christiaensen  for 
its  commander  ;  the  "  Tiger,"  of  the  same  port,  Adriaen 
Block ;  the  "  Fortune,"  of  Hoorn,  Cornells  Jacobsen  May, 
to  extend  the  discoveries  of  Hudson  as  well  as  to  trade  with 
the  natives. 

The  "  Tiger "  was  accidentally  burnt  near  the  Island  of 
Manhattan ;  but  Adriaen  Block,  building  a  yacht  of  six- 
teen tons'  burden,  which  he  named  the  "  Unrest,"  plied 
forth  to  explore  the  vicinity.  First  of  European  navigators, 
he  steered  through  Hellgato,  passed  the  archipelago  near 
Norwalk,  and  discovered  the  river  of  Red  Hills,  which  we 

VOL.  II.  8 


34 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 


know  as  the  Housatonic.  From  the  Bay  of  New  Haven  he 
turned  to  the  east,  and  ascended  the  beautiful  river  which 
he  called  the  Freshwater,  but  which,  to  this  hour,  keeps  its 
Indian  name  of  Connecticut.  Near  the  site  of  Wethersfield 
he  came  upon  one  Indian  tribe ;  just  above  Hartford,  upon 
another ;  and  he  heard  tales  of  the  Horicans,  who  dwelt 
in  the  west,  and  moved  over  lakes  in  bark  canoes.  The 
Pequods  he  found  on  the  banks  of  their  river.  At  Montauk 
Point,  then  occupied  by  a  savage  nation,  he  reached  the 
ocean,  proving  the  land  east  of  the  sound  to  be  an  island. 
After  discovering  the  island  which  bears  his  name,  and 
exploring  both  channels  of  that  which  owes  to  him  the 
name  of  Roode  Eiland,  now  Rhode  Island,  the  mariner 
from  Holland  imposed  the  names  of  places  in  his  native 
land  on  groups  in  the  Atlantic,  which,  years  before,  Gosnold 
and  other  English  navigators  had  visited.  The  "  Unrest  " 
sailed  beyond  Cape  Cod ;  and,  while  John  Smith  was  making 
maps  of  the  bays  and  coasts  of  Maine  and  Massachusetts, 
Adriaen  Block  traced  the  shore  as  far  at  least  as  Nahant. 
Then  leaving  the  American-built  yacht  at  Cape  Cod,  to  be 
used  by  Cornells  Hendricksen  in  the  fur-trade,  Block  sailed 
in  Christiaensen's  ship  for  Holland. 

The  states-general,  in  an  assembly  where  Olden  Barne- 
veldt  was  present,  readily  granted  to  the  united  company 
of  merchants  interested  in  these  discoveries  a  three  years' 
monopoly  of  trade  with  the  territory  between  Virginia  and 
New  France,  from  forty  to  forty-five  degrees  of  latitude. 
Their  charter,  given  on  the  eleventh  of  October,  1614, 
names  the  extensive  region  New  Netherland.  Its  north- 
ern part  John  Smith  had  that  same  year  called  New 
England. 

To  prosecute  their  commerce  with  the  natives, 
Christiaensen  built  for  the  company,  on  Castle  Island, 
south  of  the  present  city  of  Albany,  a  truck-house  and 
military  post.  The  building  was  thirty-six  feet  by  twenty- 
six,  the  stockade  fifty-eight  feet  square,  the  moat  eighteen 
feet  wide.  The  garrison  was  composed  of  ten  or  twelve 
men.  The  fort,  which  may  have  been  begun  in  1614,  which 
was  certainly  finished  in  1615,  was  called  Nassau  j  the  river 


1618.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  35 

for  a  time  was  known  as  the  Maurice.  With  the  Five 
Nations  a  friendship  grew  up,  which  was  soon  ratified 
according, to  the  usages  of  the  Iroquois,  and  during  the 
power  of  the  Dutch  was  never  broken.  Such  is  the  begin- 
ning of  Albany  :  it  was  the  outpost  of  the  Netherland  fur- 
trade. 

The  United  Provinces,  now  recognised  even  by  Spain  as 
free  countries,  provinces,  and  states,  set  no  bounds  to  their 
enterprise.  The  world  seemed  not  too  large  for  their  com- 
merce under  the  genial  influence  of  liberty,  achieved  after 
a  struggle  longer  and  more  desperate  than  that  of  Greece 
with  Peisia.  This  is  the  golden  age  of  their  trade  with 
Japan,  and  the  epoch  of  their  alliance  with  the  emperor  of 
Ceylon.  In  1611  their  ships  once  again  braved  the  frosts  of 
the  arctic  circle  in  search  of  a  new  way  to  China ;  and  it 
was  a  Dutch  discoverer,  Schouten,  from  Hoorn,  who, 
in  1616,  left  the  name  of  his  own  beloved  seaport  leie. 
on  the  southernmost  point  of  South  America.  In 
the  same  year  a  report  was  made  of  further  discoveries  in 
North  America.  Three  Netherlanders  —  who  went  up  the 
Mohawk  valley,  struck  a  branch  of  the  Delaware,  and  made 
their  way  to  Indians  near  the  site  of  Philadelphia  —  were 
found  by  Cornells  Hendricksen,  as  he  came  in  the  "  Unrest " 
to  explore  the  bay  and  rivers  of  Delaware.  On  his  return 
to  Holland  in  1616,  the  merchants  by  whom  he  had  been 
employed  claimed  the  discovery  of  the  country  between 
thirty-eight  and  forty  degrees.  He  described  the  inhabi- 
tants as  trading  in  sables,  furs,  and  other  skins  ;  the  land  as 
a  vast  forest,  abounding  in  bucks  and  does,  in  turkeys  and 
partridges ;  the  climate  temperate,  like  that  of  Holland  ;  the 
trees  mantled  by  the  vine.  But  the  states-general  refused 
to  grant  a  monopoly  of  trade. 

On  the  first  day  of  January,  1618,  the  exclusive  1618. 
privilege  conceded  to  the  company  of  merchants  for 
New  Netherland  expired;  but  voyages  continued  to  be 
made  by  their  agents  and  by  rival  enterprise.  The  fort 
near  Albany  having  been  destroyed  by  a  flood,  a  new  post 
was  taken  on  Norman's  Kill.  But  the  strife  of  political 
parties  still  retarded  the  establishment  of  permanent  settle- 


36  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 

merits.  By  the  constitution  of  the  Low  Countries,  the 
municipal  officers,  who  were  named  by  the  stadholder  or 
were  self-renewed  on  the  principle  of  close  corporations, 
appointed  delegates  to  the  provincial  states;  and  these 
again,  a  representative  to  the  states-general.  The  states, 
the  true  personation  of  a  fixed  commercial  aristocracy,  re- 
sisted popular  innovations ;  and  the  same  instinct  which 
led  the  Romans  to  elevate  Julius  Caesar,  the  commons  of 
England  to  sustain  Henry  YII.,  the  Danes  to  confer  hered- 
itary power  on  the  descendants  of  Frederic  III.,  the  French 
to  substitute  absolute  for  feudal  monarchy,  induced  the 
people  of  Holland  to  favor  the  stadholder.  The  division 
extended  to  domestic  politics,  theology,  and  international 
intercourse.  The  friends  of  the  stadholder  asserted  sover- 
eignty for  the  states-general ;  while  the  party  of  Olden 
Barneveldt  and  Grotius,  with  greater  reason  in  point  of 
historic  facts,  claimed  sovereignty  exclusively  for  the  pro- 
vincial assemblies.  Prince  Maui'ice,  who  desired  to  renew 
the  war  with  Spain,  favored  colonization  in  America ;  the 
aristocratic  party,  fearing  the  increase  of  executive  power, 
opposed  it  from  fear  of  new  collisions.  The  Gomarists, 
who  satisfied  the  natural  passion  for  equality  by  denying 
personal  merit,  and  ascribing  every  virtue  and  capacity  to 
the  benevolence  of  God,  leaned  to  the  crowd ;  Avhile  the 
Arminians,  nourishing  pride  by  asserting  power  and  merit 
in  man,  commended  their  creed  to  the  aristocracy.  Thus 
the  Calvinists,  popular  enthusiasm,  and  the  stadholder, 
were  arrayed  against  the  provincial  states  and  municipal 
authorities.  The  colonization  of  New  York  by  the  Dutch 
depended  on  the  struggle ;  and  the  issue  was  not  long 
doubtful.  The  excesses  of  political  ambition,  disguised 
under  the  forms  of  religious  controversy,  led  to  violent 
counsels.  In  August,  1618,  Olden  Barneveldt  and  Grotius 
were  taken  into  custody. 

In  November,  1618,  a  few  weeks  after  the  first 
acts  of  violence,  the  states-general  gave  a  limited  in- 
corporation to  a  company  of  merchants  ;  yet  the  conditions 
of  the  charter  were  not  inviting,  and  no  organization  took 
place.    In  May  of  the  following  year,  Grotius,  the  first  polit- 


1621.  NEW  NETHERLAND,  37 

ical  writer  of  his  age,  was  condemned  to  imprisonment  for 
life  ;  and  by  the  default  of  the  stadholder,  Olden  Barne veldt, 
at  the  age  of  threescore  years  and  twelve,  the  venerable 
founder  of  the  republic,  was  conducted  to  the  scaffold. 

These  events  hastened  the  colonization  of  New  Nether- 
land,  where  as  yet  no  Europeans  had  repaired  except 
commercial  agents  and  their  subordinates.  In  1620,  1620. 
merchants  of  Holland,  who  had  thus  far  had  a  trade 
only  in  Hudson  River,  wished  to  plant  there  a  new  com- 
monwealth, lest  the  king  of  Great  Britain  should  first  people 
its  banks  with  the  English  nation.  To  this  end  it  was 
proposed  to  send  over  John  Robinson,  with  four  hundred 
families  of  his  persuasion;  but  the  pilgrims  had  not  lost 
their  love  for  the  land  of  their  nativity,  and  the  states  were 
unwilling  to  guarantee  them  protection.  A  voyage  from 
Virginia,  to  vindicate  the  trade  in  the  Hudson  for  England, 
proved,  a  total  loss.  The  settlement  of  Manhattan  grew 
directly  out  of  the  great  continental  struggles  of  Prot- 
estantism. 

The  thirty  years'  war  of  religion  in  Germany  had  i62i. 
begun  ;  the  twelve  years'  truce  between  the  Nether- 
lands and  the  Spanish  king  had  nearly  expired ;  Austria 
hoped  to  crush  the  Reformation  in  the  empire,  and  Spain  to 
recover  dominion  over  its  ancient  provinces.  The  states- 
general,  whose  existence  was  menaced  by  a  combination  of 
hostile  powers,  were  summoned  to  display  unparalleled  energy 
in  their  foreign  relations ;  and  on  the  third  of  June,  1621, 
the  Dutch  West  India  company,  which  became  the  sovereign 
of  the  central  portion  of  the  United  States,  was  incorporated 
for  twenty-four  years,  with  a  pledge  of  a  renewal  of  its 
charter.  It  was  invested,  on  the  part  of  the  Netherlands, 
with  the  exclusive  privilege  to  traffic  and  plant  colonies  on 
the  coast  of  Africa  from  the  Tropic  of  Cancer  to  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope  ;  on  the  coast  of  America,  from  the  Straits 
of  Magellan  to  the  remotest  north.  Subscription  to  its 
joint  stock  was  open  to  every  nation ;  the  states-general 
made  it  a  gift  of  half  a  million  of  guilders,  and  were  stock- 
holders to  the  amount  of  another  half  million.  The  fran- 
chises of  the  company  were  immense,  that  it  might  lay  its 


88 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 


own  plans,  provide  for  its  own  defence,  and  in  all  things 
take  care  of  itself.  The  states-general,  in  case  of  war,  were 
to  be  known  only  as  its  allies  and  patrons.  While  it  was 
expected  to  render  efficient  aid  in  the  impending  war  with 
Spain,  its  permanent  objects  were  the  peopling  of  fruitful 
unsettled  countries  and  the  increase  of  trade.  It  might 
acquire  provinces,  but  only  at  its  own  risk;  and  it  was 
endowed  with  absolute  power  over  its  possessions,  subject 
to  the  approval  of  the  states-general.  The  company  was 
divided  into  five  branches  or  chambers,  of  which  that  in 
Amsterdam  represented  four  ninths  of  the  whole.  The 
government  was  intrusted  to  a  board  of  nineteen,  of  whom 
eighteen  represented  the  five  branches,  and  one  was  named 
by  the  states. 

Thus  did  a  nation  of  merchants  give  away  the  leave  to 
appropriate  continents ;  and  the  corporate  company,  invested 
with  a  boundless  liberty  of  choice,  culled  the  rich  territories 
of  Guinea,  Brazil,  and  New  Netherland. 

Colonization  on  the  Hudson  and  the  Delaware  was  neither 
the  motive  nor  the  main  object  of  the  establishment  of  the 
Dutch  West  India  company;  the  territory  was  not  de- 
scribed either  in  the  charter  or  at  that  time  in  any  public 
act  of  the  states-general,  which  neither  made  a  formal  spe- 
cific grant  nor  offered  to  guarantee  the  possession  of  a  single 
foot  of  land.  Before  the  chamber  of  Amsterdam,  under  the 
authority  of  the  company,  assumed  the  care  of  New  Nether- 
land,  while  the  trade  was  still  prosecuted  by  private  enter- 
prise, the  English  privy  council  listened  to  the  complaint  of 
Arundel,  Gorges,  Argall,  and  Mason  of  the  Plymouth  com- 
pany against  "  the  Dutch  intruders  ; "  and  by  the 
1622.  king's  direction,  in  February,  1622,  Sir  Dudley  Carle- 
ton,  then  British  ambassador  at  the  Hague,  claiming 
the  country  as  a  part  of  New  England,  required  the  states- 
general  to  stay  the  prosecution  of  their  plantation.  This 
remonstrance  received  no  explicit  answer ;  while  Carleton 
reported  of  the  Dutch  that  all  their  trade  there  was  in  ships 
of  sixty  or  eighty  tons  at  the  most,  to  fetch  furs,  nor  could 
he  learn  that  they  had  either  planted  or  designed  to  plant 
a  colony.     Bnt  the  English,  at  that  time  disheartened  by 


1625. 


NEW  NETHERLAND.  39 


the  sufferings  and  losses  encountered  in  Virginia,  were  not 
disposed  to  incur  the  unprofitable  expense  of  a  new  settle- 
ment ;  and  the  Dutch  ships,  which  went  over  in  1622,  found 
none  to  dispute  the  possession  of  the  country. 

The  organization  of  the  West  India  company  in 
1623  was  the  epoch  of  its  zealous  efforts  at  colo-  1623. 
nization.  In  the  spring  of  that  year,  "The  New 
.Netherland,"  a  ship  of  two  hundred  and  sixty  tons'  burden, 
carried  out  thirty  families.  They  were  chiefly  Walloons, 
Protestant  fugitives  from  Belgian  provinces.  April  was 
gone  before  the  vessel  reached  Manhattan.  A  party  under 
the  command  of  Cornelis  Jacobsen  May,  who  has  left  his 
name  on  the  southern  county  and  cape  of  New  Jersey, 
ascended  the  river  Delaware  then  known  as  the  South 
River  of  the  Dutch,  and  on  Timber  Creek,  a  stream  that 
enters  the  Delaware  a  few  miles  below  Camden,  built  Fort 
Nassau.  At  the  same  time  Adriaen  Joris,  on  the  site  of 
Albany,  threw  up  and  completed  the  fort  named  Orange. 
There  eighteen  families  were  settled ;  their  huts  of  bark 
rose  round  the  fort,  and  were  protected  by  covenants  of 
friendship  with  the  various  tribes  of  Indians. 

The  next  year,  1624,  may  be  tnken  as  the  era  of  a  1624. 
continuous  civil  government,  with  Cornelis  Jacobsen 
May  as  the  first  director.  It  had  power  to  punish,  but  not 
with  death  ;  judgments  for  capital  crimes  were  to  be  referred 
to  Amsterdam.  The  emigrant  ship  returned  laden  with 
valuable  furs,  and  the  colony  was  reported  to  be  bravely 
prosperous. 

In  1625,  May  was  succeeded  by  William  Yerhulst.  i625. 
The  colony  was  gladdened  by  the  arrival  of  two 
large  ships  freighted  with  cattle  and  horses,  as  well  as 
swine  and  sheep.  At  Fort  Orange  a  child  of  Netherland 
parentage  was  born.  In  that  year,  Frederick  Henry,  the 
new,  stadholder,  was  able  to  quell  the  passions  of  religious 
sects,  and  unite  all  parties  in  a  common  love  of  country. 
Danger  from  England  also  was  diminished;  for  Charles  I., 
soon  after  his  accession,  entered  into  a  most  intimate  alli- 
ance with  the  Dutch.  Just  then  Jean  de  Laet,  a  member 
of  the  chamber  of  Amsterdam,  in  an  elaborate  work  on  the 


40  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 

West  Indies,  opportunely  drew  the  attention  of  his  country- 
men to  their  rising  colony,  and  published  Hudson's  glowing 
description  of  the  land. 

Under   such    auspices,   Peter   Minuit,    a    German 

1626.  of  Wesel,  in  January,  1626,  sailed  for  New  Nether- 
land  as  its  director-general.     He  arrived  there  on  the 

fourth  of  May.  Hitherto  the  Dutch  had  no  title  to  owner- 
ship of  the  land;  Minuit  purchased  the  Island  of  Man- 
hattan from  its  native  proprietors.  The  price  paid  was 
sixty  guilders,  about  twenty-four  dollars  for  more  than 
twenty  thousand  acres.  The  southern  point  was  selected 
for  "  a  battery,"  and  lines  were  drawn  for  a  fort,  which 
took  the  name  of  New  Amsterdam.  The  town  had  already 
thirty  houses,  and  the  emigrants'  wives  had  borne  them 
children.  In  the  want  of  a  regular  minister,  two  "  con- 
solers of  the  sick  "read  to  the  people  on  Sundays  "texts 
out  of  the  Scriptures,  together  with  the  creeds." 

No  danger  appeared  in  the  distance  except  from  the  pre- 
tensions of  England.    The  government  of  Manhattan  sought 
an  interchange  of  "friendly  kindness  and   neighborhood" 
with  the  nearest  English  at  New  Plymouth ;  and  by 

1627.  a  public  letter  in  March,  1627,  it   claimed   mutual 
"  good-will  and  service,"  pleading  "  the  nearness  of 

their  native  countries,  the  friendship  of  their  forefathers, 
and  the  new  covenant  between  the  states-general  and  Eng- 
land against  the  Spaniards."  Bradford,  in  reply,  gladly  ac- 
cepted the  "  testimony  of  love."  "  Our  children  after  us," 
he  added,  "  shall  never  forget  the  good  and  courteous  en- 
treaty which  we  found  in  your  country,  and  shall  desire 
your  prosperity  for  ever."  His  benediction  was  sincere ; 
though  he  called  to  mind  that  the  English  patent  for  New 
England  extended  to  forty  degrees,  within  which,  therefore, 
the  Dutch  had  no  right  "  to  plant  or  trade ;  "  and  he  espe- 
cially begged  them  not  to  send  their  yachts  into  the 
Narragansett. 

"Our  authority  to  trade  and  plant  we  derive  from  the 
states  of  Holland,  and  will  defend  it,"  rejoined  Minuit. 
But,  in  October  of  the  same  year,  he  sent  De  Rasieres,  who 
stood  next  him  in  rank,  on  a  conciliatory  embassy  to  New 


1629.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  41 

Plymouth.  The  envoy  proceeded  in  state  with  soldiers 
and  musicians.  At  Scusset,  on  Cape  Cod  Bay,  he  was  met 
by  a  boat  from  the  Old  Colony,  and  "was  honorably  at- 
tended with  the  noise  of  trumpets."  He  succeeded  in  con- 
certing a  mutual  trade;  but  Bradford  still  warned  the 
authorities  of  New  Amsterdam  to  "clear  their  title"  to 
their  lands  without  delay.  The  advice  seemed  like  a  wish 
to  hunt  the  Dutch  out  of  their  infant  colony,  and  led  the 
college  of  nineteen  to  ask  of  the  states-general  forty  soldiers 
for  its  defence. 

Such  were  the  rude  beginnings  of  J^ew  Netherland.  1628. 
The  women  and  children  of  the  colony  were  con- 
centred on  Manhattan,  which,  in  1628,  counted  a  population 
of  two  hundred  and  seventy  souls,  including  Dutch,  Wal- 
loons, and  slaves  from  Angola.  Jonas  Michaelius,  a  clergy- 
man, arriving  in  April  of  that  year,  "  established  a  church,'' 
which  chose  Minuit  one  of  its  two  elders,  and  at  the 
first  administration  of  the  Lord's  Supper  counted  fifty 
communicants.  This  was  the  age  of  hunters  and  Indian 
traders ;  of  traffic  in  the  skins  of  otters  and  beavers ; 
when  the  native  tribes  were  employed  in  the  pursuit  of 
game,  as  far  as  the  St.  Lawretice,  and  the  skiffs  of  the 
Dutch,  in  quest  of  furs,  penetrated  every  bay  and  bosom 
and  inlet,  from  Narragansett  to  the  Delaware.  It  was 
the  day  of  straw  roofs  and  wooden  chimneys  and  wind- 
mills. There  had  been  no  extraordinary  charge ;  there  was 
no  multitude  of  people  ;  but  labor  was  well  directed'  and 
profitable ;  and  the  settlement  promised  fairly  both  to  the 
state  and  to  the  undertakers.  The  experiment  in  feudal 
institutions  followed. 

Reprisals  on  Spanish  commerce  were  the  alluring  pursuit 
of  the  West  India  company.  On  a  single  occasion,  in  1628, 
the  captures  secured  by  its  privateers  were  almost  eighty- 
fold  more  valuable  than  all  the  exports  from  their  colony 
for  the  four  j^receding  years.  While  the  company  of 
merchant  warriors,  conducting  their  maritime  enter-  1629. 
prises  like  princes,  were  making  prizes  of  the  rich 
fleets  of  Portugal  and  Spain,  and,  by  their  victories,  pouring 
the  wealth  of  America  into  their  treasury,  the  states-general 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXn. 

interposed  to  subject  the  government  of  foreign  con- 
1629.       quests  to  a  council  of  nine ;  and  in  1629  the  college 

of  nineteen  adopted  a  charter  of  privileges  for  pa^ 
troons  who  desired  to  found  colonies  in  New  Ketherland. 
These  colonies  were  to  resemble  the  lordships  in  the 
Netherlands.  Every  one  who  would  emigrate  on  his  own 
account  was  23romised  as  much  land  as  he  could  cultivate ; 
but  husbandmen  were  not  expected  to  emigrate  without 
aid.  The  liberties  of  Holland  were  the  fruit  of  municipali- 
ties ;  the  country  people  were  subordinate  to  their  landlord, 
against  whose  oppression  the  town  was  their  refuge.  The 
boors  enjoyed  as  yet  no  political  franchises,  and  had  not 
had  the  experience  required  for  planting  states  on  a  prin- 
ciple of  equality.  To  the  enterprise  of  proprietaries,  New 
Netherland  was  to  owe  its  tenants.  He  that  within  four 
years  would  plant  a  colony  of  fifty  souls  became  lord  of  the 
manor,  or  patroon,  possessing  in  absolute  property  the  lands 
he  might  colonize.  Those  lands  might  extend  sixteen  miles 
in  length  ;  or,  if  they  lay  upon  both  sides  of  a  river,  eight 
miles  on  each  bank,  stretching  indefinitely  far  into  the  in- 
terior ;  yet  it  was  stipulated  that  the  soil  must  be  purchased 
of  the  Indians.  Were  citi*es  to  grow  up,  the  institution  of 
their  government  would  rest  with  the  patroon,  who  was  to 
exercise  judicial  power,  yet  subject  to  appeals.  The  school- 
master and  the  minister  were  praised  as  desirable ;  but  there 
was  no  establishment  for  their  maintenance.  The  colonists 
were  forbidden  to  manufacture  any  woollen  or  linen  or  cotton 
fabrics;  not  a  web  might  be  woven,  not  a  shuttle  thrown, 
on  penalty  of  exile.  To  impair  the  monopoly  of  the  Dutch 
weavers  was  punishable  as  a  perjury.  The  company,  more- 
over, pledged  itself  to  furnish  the  manors  with  negroes ;  yet 
not,  it  was  warily  provided,  unless  the  traflic  should  prove 
lucrative.  The  Isle  of  Manhattan,  as  the  chosen  seat  of 
commerce,  was  reserved  to  the  company. 

This  charter  of  liberties  was  fatal  to  the  interests  of  the 
corporation ;  its  directors  and  agents  immediately  appro- 
priated to  themselves  the  most  valuable  portions  of  its  ter- 
ritory. In  June,  1629,  three  years,  therefore,  before  the 
concession  of  the  charter  for  Maryland,  Samuel  Godyn  and 


1630.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  43 

Samuel  Blommaert,  both  directors  of  the  Amsterdam  cham- 
ber, bargained  with  the  natives  for  the  soil  from  Cape 
Henlopen  to  the  mouth  of  Delaware  River ;  in  July, 
1630,  this  purchase  of  an  estate,  more  than  thirty  1630. 
miles  long,  was  ratified  at  Fort  Amsterdam  by  Min- 
uit  and  his  council.  It  is  the  oldest  deed  for  land  in  Dela- 
ware, and  comprises  the  water-line  of  the  two  southern 
counties  of  that  state.  Still  larger  domains  were  in  the 
same  year  appropriated  by  the  agents  of  another  director  of 
the  Amsterdam  chamber,  Kiliaen  van  Rensselaer,  to  whom 
successive  purchases  from  Mohawk  and  Mohican  chiefs  gave 
titles  to  land  north  and  south  of  Fort  Orange.  His  deeds 
also  were  promptly  confirmed ;  so  that  his  possessions,  in- 
cluding a  later  supplementary  acquisition,  extended  above 
and  below  Fort  Orange,  for  twenty-four  miles  on  each  side 
of  the  river  and  forty-eight  miles  into  the  interior.  In  the 
same  year  he  sent  out  emigrants  to  the  colony  of  Ren sselaer- 
wyck.  In  July,  1630,  Michael  Pauw,  another  director, 
bought  Staten  Island;  in  the  following  November,  he  be- 
came the  patroon  of  Hoboken  and  what  is  now  Jersey  City ; 
and  he  named  his  "'  colonic  "  on  the  mainland  Pavonia. 

The  company  had  designed,  by  its  charter  of  liberties,  to 
favor  the  peopling  of  the  province,  and  yet  to  retain  its 
trade ;  under  pretence  of  advancing  agriculture,  individuals 
had  acquired  a  title  to  all  the  important  points,  where  the 
natives  resorted  for  traffic.  As  a  necessary  consequence, 
the  feudal  possessors  were  often  in  collision  with  the  central 
government ;  while,  to  the  humble  emigrant,  the  monopoly 
of  commerce  was  aggravated  by  the  monopoly  of  land. 

A  company  was  soon  formed  to  colonize  the  tract  acquired 
by  Godyn  and  Blommaert.  The  first  settlement  in  Delaware, 
older  than  any  in  Pennsylvania,  was  undertaken  by  a  com- 
pany, of  which  Godyn,  Van  Rensselaer,  Blommaert,  the  histo- 
rian De  Laet,  and  a  new  partner,  David  Pietersen  de  Vries, 
were  members.  By  joint  enterprise,  in  December,  1630,  a  ship 
of  eighteen  guns,  commanded  by  Pieter  Heyes,  and  laden 
with  emigrants,  store  of  seeds,  cattle,  and  agricultural  im- 
plements, embarked  from  the  Texel,  partly  to  cover  the 
southern  shore  of  Delaware  Bay  with  fields  of  wheat  and 


44 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXII. 


tobacco,  and  partly  for  a  whale-fialiery  on  the  coast.     A 
yacht  which  went  in  company  was  taken  by  a  Dun- 

1631.  kirk  privateer ;  early  in  the  spring  of  1631,  the  larger 
vessel  reached  its  destination,  and  just  within  Cape 

Henlopen,  on  Lewes  Creek,  planted  a  colony  of  more  than 
thirty  souls.  The  superintendence  of  the  settlement  was 
intrusted  to  Gillis  Hosset.  A  little  fort  was  built  and  well 
beset  with  palisades ;  the  firms  of  Holland  were  affixed  to  a 
pillar ;  the  country  received  the  name  of  Swaanendael ;  the 
water,  that  of  Godyn's  Bay.  The  voyage  of  Heyes  was  the 
cradling  of  a  state.  That  Delaware  exists  as  a  separate 
commonwealth  is  due  to  this  colony.  According  to  English 
rule,  occupancy  was  necessary  to  complete  a  title  to  the 
wilderness ;  and  the  Dutch  now  occupied  Delaware. 

On  the  fifth  of  May,  Heyes  and  Hosset,  in  behalf  of 
Godyn  and  Blommaert,  made  a  further  purchase  from  In- 
dian chiefs  of  the  opposite  coast  of  Cape  May,  for  twelve 
miles  on  the  bay,  on  the  sea,  and  in  the  interior ;  and,  in 
June,  this  sale  of  a  tract,  twelve  miles  square,  was  formally 
attested  at  Manhattan. 

Animated  by  the  courage  of  Godyn,  the  patroons  of 
Swaanendael  fitted  out  a  second  expedition,  under  the 
command  of  De  Yries.  But,  before  he  set  sail,  news  was 
received  of  the  destruction  of  the  fort  and  the  murder  of 
its  people.  Hosset,  the  commandant,  had  caused  the  death 
of  an  Indian  chief ;  and  the  revenge  of  the  savages  was  not 
appeased  till  not  one  of  the  emigrants  remained  alive.  De 
Vries,  on  his  arrival,  found  only  the  ruins  of  the  house  and 
its  palisades,  half  consumed  by  fire,  and  here  and  there  the 
bones  of  the  colonists. 

Before  the  Dutch  could  recover  the  soil  of  Delaware  from 
the  natives,  the  patent  granted  to  Baltimore  gave  them  an 
English  competitor.  Distracted  by  anarchy,  the  adminis- 
tration of  New  Netherland  could  not  withstand  encroach- 
ments. The  too  powerful  patroons  disputed  the  fur-trade 
with  the  agents  of  the  West  India  company.     In 

1632.  1632,  to  still  the  quarrels,  the  discontented  Minuit 
was   displaced;   but  the  inherent  evils   in  the   sys- 
tem were  not  lessened  by  appointing  as  his  successor  the 


1640.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  45 

selfish  and  incompetent  Wouter  van  T wilier.     The  English 
government  claimed  that  New  Netherland  was  planted  only 
on  sufferance.     The    ship  in  which   Minuit   embarked   for 
Holland  entered  Plymouth  in  a  stress  of  weather,  and  was 
detained  for  a  time  on  the  allegation  that  it  had  traded  with- 
out license  in  a  part  of  the  king's  dominions.     Yan 
Twiller,  who  arrived  at  Manhattan  in  April,  1633,       1633. 
was  defied  by  an  English  ship,  which  sailed  up  the 
river  before  his  eyes.      The  rush  of  Puritan  emigrants  to 
New  England  had  quickened  the  movements  of  the  Dutch 
on  the  Connecticut,  which  they  undoubtedly  were  the  first 
to  discover  and  to  occupy.     The  soil  round  Hartford 
was  purchased  of  the  natives,  and  a  fort  was  erected    Jan.  8. 
on  land  within  the  present  limits  of  that  city,  some 
months   before    the   pilgrims   of    Plymouth   colony   raised 
their  block-house  at  Windsor,  and  more  than  two 
years  before  the  people  of  Hooker  and  Haynes  began       i635. 
the  commonwealth  of  Connecticut.     To  Avhom  did 
the  country  belong  ?     Like  the  banks  of  the  Hudson,  it  had 
been  first  explored,  and  even  occupied,  by  the  Dutch ;  but 
should  a  log  hut  and  a  few  straggling  soldiers  seal  a  terri- 
tory against  other  emigrants  ?     The  English  planters  were 
on  a  soil  over  which  England  had  ever  claimed  the  sover- 
eignty, and  of  which  the  English  monarch   had  made  a 
grant ;  they  were  there  with  their  wives  and  children,  and 
they  were  there  for  ever.     It  were  a  sin,  said  they,  to  leave 
so  fertile  a  land  unimproved.     Their  religious  enthusiasm, 
zeal  for  popular  liberty,  and  numbers,  did  not  leave  the 
issue  uncertain.     Altercations  continued  for  years.     The 
Dutch  fort  remained  in  the  hands  of  the  Dutch  West  India 
company  till  it  was  surrounded  by  English  towns.     At  last, 
the  English  in  Connecticut  grew  so  numerous  as  not  only 
to  overwhelm  its  garrison,  but,  under  a  grant  from  Lord 
Stirling,  to  plant  a  part  of   Long  Island.      In  the 
second  year  of  the  government  of  William  Kieft,  the       i64o. 
arms  of  the  Dutch  on  the  east  end  of  that  island 
were  thrown  down  in  derision,  and  a  fool's  head  set  in  their 
pjace. 

While  the  New  England  men  were  thus  encroaching  on 


46 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXII. 


the  Dutch  on  the  east,  a  new  competitor  for  possessions  in 
America  appeared  in  Delaware  Bay.     Gustavus  Adolphus, 
the  greatest  benefactor  of  his  race  in  the  line  of  Swedish 
kings,  had  discerned  the  advantages  which  might  be  ex- 
pected from  colonies  and  widely  extended  commerce. 
1624.       The  royal  zeal  was  encouraged  by  William  Usselinx, 
a   Netherlander,   who   for   many   years    had    given 
thought  to  the  subject;  at  his  instance,  a  commercial  com- 
pany, with  exclusive  privileges  to  traffic  beyond  the  Straits 
of  Gibraltar,  and  the  right  of  planting  colonies,  was 
June  14.  sanctioned  by  the  king  and  incorporated  by  the  states 
Ma^^i     ^^  Sweden.     The  stock  was  open  to  all  Europe  for 
subscription ;  the  king  himself  pledged  four  hundred 
thousand  dollars  of  the  royal  treasure  on  equal  risks ;  the 
chief  place  of  business  was  established  at  Gottenburg ;  a 
branch   was   promised   to    any   city  which  would   embark 
three  hundred  thousand  dollars  in  the  undertaking.     The 
government  of  the  future  colonies  was  reserved  to  a  royal 
council :  for  "  politics,"  says  the  charter,  "  lie  beyond  the 
profession  of  merchants."    Men  of  every  rank  were  solicited 
to  engage  in  the  enterprise ;  it  was  resolved  to  invite  "  col- 
onists from  all  the   nations   of   Europe."      Other  nations 
employed  slaves  in  their  colonies ;  and  "  slaves,"  said  they, 
"  cost  a  great  deal,  labor  with  reluctance,  and  soon  perish 
from  hard  usage ;    the    Swedish   nation   is   laborious   and 
intelligent,  and  surely  we  shall  gain  more  by  a  free  people 
with  wives  and  children."     To  the  Scandinavian  imagina- 
tion, hope  painted  the  New  World  as  a  paradise ;  the  pro- 
posed colony  as  a  benefit  to  the  persecuted,  a  security  "  to 
the  honor  of  the  wives  and  daughters  "  of  those  whom  wars 
£ind  bigotry  had  made  fugitives  ;  a  blessing  to  the  "  common 
man ; "   to  the  "  whole  Protestant  world."     It  may 
1629.       prove  the  advantage,  said  Gustavus,  of  "  all  oppressed 
Christendom." 
But  the  reviving  influence  of  the  pope  menaced  Prot- 
estant Christendom  with  ruin.      The  insurrection  against 
intellectual  servitude,  of  which  the  Reformation  was  the 
1630      gi*eat  expression,  appeared  in  danger  of  being  sup- 
May  29.  pressed,  when   Gustavus   Adolphus   resolved  to  in- 


1638.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  4T 

vade  Germany  and  vindicate  the  rights  of  conscience  with 
his  sword.  Even  the  cherished  purpose  of  colonization 
yielded  in  the  emergency;  and  the  funds  of  the  company 
were  arbitrarily  applied  as  resources  in  the  war.  It  was  a 
war  of  revolution ;  a  struggle  to  secure  German  liberty  by 
establishing  religious  equality;  yet  even  the  great  events 
on  which  the  destinies  of  Germany  were  suspended  could 
not  wholly  drive  from  tlie  mind  of  Gustavus  his  de- 
signs in  America.  They  did  but  enlarge  his  views ;  ocSe. 
and  at  Nuremberg,  only  a  few  days  before  the  battle 
of  Liitzen,  where  humanity  won  one  of  her  most  glori- 
ous victories,  and  lost  one  of  her  ablest  defenders,  the  en- 
terprise, which  still  appeared  to  him  as  "  the  jewel  of  his 
kingdom,"  was  recommended  to  the  people  of  Germany. 

In  confirming  the  invitation  to  Germany,  Oxen-     1633. 
stiern  declares  himself   to  be   but  the  executor   of  ^^^-  ^^• 
the  wish  of  Gustavus.      The  same  wise  statesman,  one  of 
the  great  men  of  all  time,  the  serene  chancellor,  who  in  the 
busiest  scenes  never  took  a  care  with  him  to  his  couch, 
renewed  the  patent  of  the  company  in  June,  1633,  June  26. 
and  in  December  of  the  next  year  extended  its  ben- 
efits to  Germany.    The  charter  was  soon  confirmed  by  the 
deputies  of  the  four  upper  circles  at  Frankfort.     "  The  con- 
sequences "  of  this  design,  said  Oxenstiern,  "  will  be  favor- 
able to  all  Christendom,  to  Europe,  to  the  whole  world." 
And  were  they  not  so  ?     The  first  permanent  colonization 
of  the  banks  of  the  Delaware  is  due  to  Oxenstiern. 

Yet  more  than  four  years  passed  away  before  the 
design  was  carried  into  effect.  We  have  seen  Min-  i638. 
uit,  the  early  governor  of  New  Netherland,  forfeit 
his  place  amidst  the  strifes  of  faction.  He  now  offered 
the  benefit  of  his  experience  to  the  Swedes  ;  and  leaving 
Sweden,  probably  near  the  close  of  the  year  1637,  he  sailed 
for  the  Bay  of  Delaware.  Two  vessels,  the  "  Key  of  Cal- 
mar  "  and  the  "  Griffin,"  formed  his  whole  fleet ;  the  Swed- 
ish government  provided  the  emigrants  with  a  religious 
teacher,  with  provisions,  and  merchandise  for  traffic  with 
the  natives.  Early  in  the  year  1638,  the  little  company  of 
Swedes  and  Finns  arrived  in  the  Delaware  Bay ;  the  lands 


48  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 

from  the  sonthprn  cape,  which  the  emigrants  from  hyper- 
borean regions  named  Paradise  Point,  to  the  falls  in  the 
river  near  Trenton,  were  purchased  of  the  natives ;  and 
near  the  mouth  of  Christiana  Creek,  within  the  limits  of  the 
present  state  of  Delaware,  Christiana  Fort,  so  called  from 
the  little  girl  who  was  then  queen  of  Sweden,  was  erected. 

The  colony  was  not  unmolested.  Should  the  Dutch  suffer 
their  province  to  be  dismembered  ?  The  records  at  Albany 
still  preserve  the  paper  in  which  Kieft,  then  director-gen- 
eral of  New  Netherland,  claimed  for  the  Dutch  the  country 
on  the  Delaware  :  their  possession  had  long  been  guarded 
by  forts,  and  had  been  sealed  by  the  blood  of  their  country- 
men. But  at  that  time  the  fame  of  Swedish  arms  pro- 
tected the  Swedish  flag  in  the  New  World ;  and,  while 
Banner  and  Torstenson  were  humbling  Austria  and  Den- 
mark, the  Dutch  did  not  proceed  beyond  a  protest. 

Meantime,  tidings  of  the  loveliness  of  the  country  had 
been  borne  to  Scandinavia,  and  the  peasantry  of  Sweden 
and  of  Finland  longed  to  exchange  their  farms  in  Europe 
for  homes  on  the  Delaware.  Emigration  increased ;  at  the 
last  considerable  expedition,  there  were  more  than  a  hun- 
dred families  eager  to  embark  for  the  land  of  promise, 
and  unable  to  obtain  a  passage  in  the  crowded  vessels.  The 
plantations  of  the  Swedes  were  gradually  extended  ;  and 
to  preserve  the  ascendency  over  the  Dutch,  who  re- 
newed their  fort  at  Nassau,  Printz,  the  governor, 
1643.  in  1643,  established  his  residence  in  Tinicum,  a  few 
miles  below  Philadelphia.  A  fort,  constructed  of 
hemlock  logs,  defended  the  island  ;  and  houses  began  to 
cluster  in  its  neighborhood.  Pennsylvania,  like  Delaware, 
traces  its  lineage  to  the  Swedes,  who  had  planted  a  suburb 
of  Philadelphia  before  William  Penn  became  its  proprie- 
tary. The  banks  of  the  Delaware  from  the  ocean  to  the 
falls  were  known  as  New  Sweden.  The  few  English  fami- 
lies within  its  limits,  emigrants  from  New  England, 
1640.  allured  by  the  climate  and  the  opportunity  of  Indian 
traffic,  were  either  driven  from  the  soil  or  submitted 
to  Swedish  jurisdiction. 

While  the  limits  of  New  Netherland  were  narrowed  by 


1642.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  49 

competitors  on  the  east  and  on  the  south,  and  Long  Island 
was  soon  to  be  claimed  by  the  agent  of  Lord  Stirling, 
the  colony  was  almost  annihilated  by  the  vengeance  of 
the  neighboring  Algonkin  tribes.  Angry  and  even  bloody 
quarrels  had  sometimes  arisen  between  dishonest  traders 
and  savages  maddened  by  intoxication.  The  blame- 
less settlement  on  Staten  Island  had,  in  consequence,  i640. 
been  ruined  by  the  blind  vengeance  of  the  tribes  of 
New  Jersey.  The  strife  continued.  An  Indiafi  boy,  who 
had  been  present  when,  years  before,  his  uncle  had  been 
robbed  and  murdered,  had  vowed  revenge,  and,  now 
that  ho  was  grown  to  man's  estate,  remembered  and  i64i. 
executed  the  vow  of  his  childhood.  A  roving  but 
fruitless  expedition  into  the  country  south  of  the  Hudson  was 
the  consequence.  The  Raritans  were  outlawed,  and  a  bounty 
of  ten  fathoms  of  wampum  was  offered  for  every  member  of 
the  tribe.  The  season  of  danger  brought  with  it  the  necessity 
of  consulting  the  people  ;  and  the  commons  elected  a  body 
of  twelve  to  assist  the  governor.  De  Vries,  the  head  of 
the  committee  of  the  people,  urged  the  advantage  of  friend- 
ship with  the  natives.  But  the  traders  did  not  learn  hu- 
manity, nor  the  savage  forget  revenge ;  and  the  son  of  a 
chief,  stung  by  the  conviction  of  having  been  defrauded 
and  robbed,  aimed  an  unerring  arrow  at  the  first  Hol- 
lander exposed  to  his  fury.  A  deputation  of  the  1642. 
river  chieftains  hastened  to  express  their  sorrow,  and 
deplore  the  never-ending  alternations  of  bloodshed.  The 
murderer  they  could  not  deliver  up  ;  but  after  the  custom 
of  the  Saxons  in  the  days  of  Alfred,  or  the  Irish  under 
Elizabeth,  in  exact  correspondence  with  the  usages  of  earli- 
est Greece,  they  offered  to  purchase  security  for  the  mur- 
derer by  a  fine  for  blood.  Two  hundred  fathom  of  the  best 
wampum  might  console  the  grief  of  the  widow.  "  You 
yourselves,"  they  added,  "  are  the  cause  of  this  evil ;  you 
ought  not  craze  the  young  Indians  with  brandy.  Your 
own  people,  when  drunk,  fight  with  knives,  and  do  foolish 
things  ;  you  cannot  prevent  mischief,  till  you  cease  to  sell 
strong  drink  to  the  Indian." 

Kieft  was  inexorable,  and  demanded  the  murderer.     Just 

VOL.   II.  4 


'60  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXH. 

then,  a  small  party  of  Mohawks  from  the  neighbor- 
j^^;       hood  of  Fort  Orange,  armed  with  muskets,  descended 

from  their  fastnesses,  and  claimed  the  natives  round 
Manhattan  as  tributaries.  At  the  approach  of  the  formida- 
ble warriors  of  a  braver  Huron  race,  the  more  numerous  but 
cowering  Algonkins  crowded  together  in  despair,  begging 
assistance  of  the  Dutch.  Kieft  seized  the  moment  for  an 
exterminating  massacre.     In  vain  was  it  foretold  that  the 

ruin  would  light  upon  the  Dutch  themselves.  In  the 
2^^26.     stillness  of  a  dark  winter's  night,  the  soldiers  at  the 

fort,  joined  by  freebooters  from  Dutch  privateers,  and 
led  by  a  guide  who  knew  every  by-path  and  nook  where 
the  savages  nestled,  crossed  the  Hudson,  for  the  purpose  of 
destruction.  The  unsuspecting  tribes  could  offer  little  re- 
sistance. Nearly  a  hundred  perished  in  the  carnage.  Day- 
break did  not  end  its  horrors ;  men  might  be  seen,  mangled 
and  helpless,  suffering  from  cold  and  hunger ;  children  were 
tossed  into  the  stream,  and,  as  their  parents  plunged  to 
their  rescue,  the  soldiers  prevented  their  landing,  that  both 
child  and  parent  might  drown. 

The  massacre  was  held  in  detestation  by  the  colonists, 
who  afterwards  decided  to  imitate  the  precedent  of  Vir- 
ginia, by  deposing  their  governor  and  sending  him  back  to 
Holland.  For  the  moment,  he  was  proud  of  his  deed  of 
treachery,  and  greeted  the  returning  troops  with  exultation. 
But  his  joy  was  short.  No  sooner  was  it  known  that  the 
midnight  attack  had  been  made  not  by  the  Mohawks,  but 
by  the  Dutch,  than  every  Algonkin  tribe  round  Manhattan 
was  seized  with  frenzy.  From  the  swamps  sudden  onsets 
were  made  in  every  direction ;  villages  were  laid  waste ; 
the  farmer  murdered  in  the  field  ;  his  children  swept  into 
captivity.  From  the  shores  of  New  Jersey  to  the  borders 
of  Connecticut,  not  a  bowery  was  safe.  It  was  on  this  occa- 
sion that  Anne  Hutchinson  perished  with  her  family.  The 
Dutch  colony  was  threatened  with  ruin.  "  Mine  eyes," 
says  a  witness,  "  saw  the  flames  at  their  towns,  and  the 
frights  and  hurries  of  men,  women,  and  children,  the  pres- 
ent removal  of  all  that  could  for  Holland."  The  director 
was  compelled  to  desire  peace. 


1640. 


NEW  NETHERLAND.  61 


On  the  fifth  of  March,  1643,  a  convention  of  six-  1543 
teen  sachems  assembled  in  the  woods  of  Rockaway ;  ^*^-  '^• 
and  at  daybreak  De  Vries  and  another,  the  two  envoys 
from  Manhattan,  were  conducted  to  the  centre  of  the  little 
senate.  Their  best  orator  addressed  them,  holding  in  one 
hand  a  bundle  of  small  sticks.  "  When  you  first  arrived  on 
our  shores,  you  were  destitute  of  food ;  we  gave  you  our 
beans  and  our  corn  ;  we  fed  you  with  oysters  and  fish  ;  and 
now,  for  our  recompense,  you  murder  our  people."  Such 
were  his  opening  words  ;  having  put  down  one  little  stick, 
he  proceeded :  "  The  traders  whom  your  first  ships  left  on 
our  shore,  to  traffic  till  their  return,  were  cherished  by  us  as 
the  apple  of  our  eye :  we  gave  them  our  daughters  for  their 
wives  ;  among  those  whom  you  have  murdered  were  chil- 
dren of  your  own  blood."  He  laid  down  another  stick  ; 
and  many  more  remained  in  his  hand,  each  a  memento 
of  an  unsatisfied  wrong.  "  I  know  all,"  said  De  Vries,  in- 
terrupting him,  and  inviting  the  chiefs  to  repair  to  thie  fort. 
The  speaking  ceased ;  the  chieftains  gave  costly  presents, 
ten  fathoms  of  seawan,  to  each  of  the  whites  ;  and  then  the 
party  went  by  water  to  New  Amsterdam.  There  peace 
was  made  ;  but  the  presents  of  Kieft  were  those  of  a  nig- 
gard, and  left  still  in  the  Indians  the  rankling  memory  of 
the  cruel  slaughter  of  their  infants.  A  month  later,  a  sim- 
ilar covenant  was  made  with  the  tribes  on  the  river.  But 
confidence  was  not  restored.  The  young  warriors  among 
the  red  men  would  not  be  pacified ;  one  had  lost  a  father 
or  a  mother ;  a  second  owed  revenge  to  the  memory  of  a 
friend.  No  sufficient  ransom  had  stifled  revenge  and 
calmed  the  pride  of  honor.  "The  presents  we  have  July 20. 
received,"  said  an  older  chief,  in  despondency,  "  bear 
no  proportion  to  our  loss  ;  the  price  of  blood  has  not  Sept.  15. 
been  paid  ; "  and  war  was  renewed. 

The  commander  of  the  Dutch  troops  was  John  Underhill, 
a  fugitive  from  New  England,  a  veteran  in  Indian  warfare, 
and  one  of  the  bravest  men  of  his  day.  Having  the  licen- 
tiousness not  less  than  the  courage  of  the  soldiers  of  that 
age,  he  had  been  compelled,  at  Boston,  in  a  great 
assembly,  on  lecture-day,  during  the  session  of  the       i64o. 


52 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXH. 


general  court,  dressed  in  the  habit  of  a  penitent,  to  stand 
upon  a  platform,  and  with  sighs  and  tears,  and  bi-okenness 
of  heart,  and  the  aspect  of  sorrow,  to  beseech  the  com- 
passion of  the  congregation.  In  the  following  year, 
Sept.      he  removed  to  New  Netherland,  and  now,  \nth  an 

army  of  one  hundred  and  twenty  men,  became  the 

protector  of  the  Dutch  settlements.  The  war  con- 
^1645?    tinned  for  two  years.     At  length,  the  Dutch  were 

weary  of  danger ;  the  Indians  tired  of  being  hunted 

like  beasts.  The  Mohawks  claimed  a  sovereignty 
Atfg.^30.  ^^^^  ^h®  Algonkins ;  their  ambassador  appeared  at 

Manhattan  to  negotiate  a  peace  ;  and  in  front  of 
Fort  Amsterdam,  according  to  Indian  usage,  under  the 
open  sky,  on  the  spot  now  so  beautiful,  where  the  com- 
merce of  the  world  may  be  watched  from  shady  walks, 
in  the  presence  of  the  sun  and  of  the  ocean,  the  sachems  of 
New  Jersey,  of  the  River  Indians,  of  the  Mohicans,  and 
of  Long  Island,  acknowledging  the  chiefs  of  the  Five 
Nations  as  witnesses  and  arbitrators,  and  having  around 
them  the  director  and  council  of  New  Netherland,  with  the 

whole  commonalty  of  the  Dutch,  set  their  marks  to 
Sept.  6.    a  solemn  treaty  of  peace.     The  joy  of  the  colony 

broke  forth  into  a  general  thanksgiving ;  but  infamy 
attached  to  the  name  of  Kieft,  the  author  of  the  carnage  ; 
the  emigrants  desired  to  reject  him  as  their  governor ;  the 

West  India  company  disclaimed  his  barbarous  policy, 
lets!       About  two  years  after  the  peace,  he  embarked  for 

Europe  in  a  large  and  richly  laden  vessel ;  but  the 
ship  in  which  he  sailed  was  dashed  in  pieces  on  the  coast 
of  Wales,  and  the  man  of  blood  was  overwhelmed  by  the 
waves. 

A  better  day  dawned  on  New  Netherland,  when  the 
brave  and  honest  Stuyvesant,  recently  the  vice-director  of 
Curayao,  wounded  in  the  West  Indies,  in  the  attack  on  St. 

Martin,  a  soldier  of  experience,  a  scholar  of  some 
1646.       learning,  was  promoted  for  his  services,  and  entered 

on  the  government  of  the  province.  Sad  experience 
Majh.  dictated  a  system  of  lenity  towards  the  natives.    The 

interests  of  New  Netherland  required  free  trade ;  at 


1649.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  53 

first,  the  department  of  Amsterdam,  which  had  alone  1648. 
borne  the  expense  of  the  colony,  would  tolerate  no 
interlopers.  But  the  monopoly  could  not  be  enforced  ;  and 
export  duties  were  substituted.  Manhattan  began  to  pros- 
per, when  its  merchants  obtained  freedom  to  follow  the 
impulses  of  their  own  enterprise.  The  glorious  destiny  of 
the  city  was  anticipated.  "  When  your  commerce  becomes 
established,  and  your  ships  ride  on  every  part  of  the  ocean, 
throngs  that  look  towards  you  with  eager  eyes  will  be 
allured  to  embark  for  your  island."  This  prophecy  was, 
nearly  two  centuries  ago,  addressed  by  the  merchants  of 
Amsterdam  to  the  merchants  of  Manhattan.  At  that  time, 
who  could  have  foreseen  that  the  population  and  wealth  of 
that  famed  emporium  would  one  day  be  so  far  excelled  by 
the  settlement  that  had  barely  saved  its  life  from  the 
vengeance  of  the  savages  ?  The  Island  of  New  York  1649. 
was  then  chiefly  divided  among  farmers;  the  large 
forests  which  covered  the  park  and  the  adjacent  region 
long  remained  a  common  pasture,  where,  for  yet  a  quarter 
of  a  century,  tanners  could  obtain  bark,  and  boys  chest- 
nuts ;  and  the  soil  was  so  little  valued  that  Stuyvesant 
thought  it  no  wrong  to  his  employers  to  purchase  of  them 
at  a  small  price  an  extensive  bowery  just  beyond  the  cop- 
pices, among  which  browsed  the  goats  and  kine  from  the 
village. 

A  desire  grew  up  for  municipal  liberties.  The  company 
which  effected  the  early  settlements  of  New  Netherland 
introduced  the  self-perpetuating  councils  of  the  Netherlands. 
The  emigrants  were  scattered  on  boweries  or  plantations ; 
and,  seeing  the  evils  of  this  mode  of  living  widely  apart, 
they  were  advised  in  1643  and  1646  by  the  Dutch  authori- 
ties to  gather  into  "  villages,  towns,  and  hamlets,  as  the 
English  were  in  the  habit  of  doing."  In  1649,  when  the 
province  was  "  in  a  very  poor  and  most  low  condition," 
the  commonalty  of  New  Netherland,  in  a  petition  addressed 
to  the  "  states-general,"  prayed  for  a  suitable  municipal  gov- 
ernment. They  referred  to  the  case  of  New  England,  say- 
ing "  neither  patroons,  lords,  nor  princes  are  known  there, 
only  the  people.    Each  town,  no  matter  how  small,  hath  its 


54  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 

own  court  and  jurisdiction,  also  a  voice  in  the  capitol,  and 
elects  its  own  officers."     But  the  prayer  was  unheeded. 
With  its  feeble  population,  New  Netherland    could  not 

protect  the  eastern  boundary.     Of  what  avail  were 
1647.       protests  against  actual  settlers  ?     Stuyvesant  was  in- 
structed to  preserve  the   House   of   Good   Hope  at 
]^l[       Hartford  ;  but,  while  he  was  claiming  the  country 

from  Cape  Cod  to  Cape  Henlopen,  there  was  danger 
that  the  "N"ew  England  men  would  stretch  their  settlements 
to  the  North  River,  intercept  the  navigation  from  Fort 
Orange,  and  monopolize  the  fur-trade.  The  commercial 
corporation  would  not  risk  a  war;  the  expense  would  im- 
pair its  dividends.  "  War,"  they  declared,  "  cannot  in  any 
event  be  for  our  advantage ;  the  New  England  people  are 

too  powerful  for  us."  No  issue  was  left  but  by  nego- 
Sept.^ii.  tiation  ;  Stuyvesant  himself  repaired  as  ambassador 

to  Hartford,  and  was  glad  to  conclude  a  provisional 
treaty,  which  allowed  New  Netherland  to  extend  on  Long 
Island  as  far  as  Oyster  Bay,  on  the  main  to  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Greenwich.  This  intercolonial  treaty  was  accept- 
able to  the  West  India  company,  but  was  never  ratified  in 
England ;  its  conditional  approbation  by  the  states-general 
is  the  only  state  paper  in  which  the  Dutch  government  rec- 
ognised the  boundaries  of  the  province  on  the  Hudson. 
The  West  India  company  could  never  obtain  a  national 
guarantee  for  the  integrity  of  their  possessions. 
1651  to  The  war  between  the  rival  republics  in  Europe  did 
1654.  jjQ|.  extend  to  America ;  in  England,  Roger  Williams 
delayed  an  armament  against  New  Netherland.     It  is  true 

that  the  West  India  company,  dreading  an  attack 
jJaghs.  f^om  New  England,  had  instructed  their  governor 

"to  engage  the  Indians  in  his  cause."  But  the 
friendship  of  the  Narragansetts  for  the  Puritans  could  not 
be  shaken.  "  I  am  poor,"  said  Mixam,  one  of  their  sachems, 
"but  no  presents  of  goods,  or  of  guns,  or  of  powder  and 
shot,  shall  draw  me  into  a  conspiracy  against  my  friends 

the  English."  The  naval  successes  of  the  Dutch  in- 
1653.       spired  milder  counsels;  and  the  news  of  peace  in 

Europe  soon  quieted  every  apprehension. 


1666.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  65 

The  provisionary  compact  left  Connecticut  in  possession 
of  a  moiety  of  Long  Island ;  the  whole  had  often,  but  in- 
effectually, been  claimed  by  Lord  Stirling.     Near  the 
southern  frontier  of  New  Belgium,  on  Delaware  Bay,  june*2i. 
the   favor   of    Strafford    had    also    obtained   for    Sir 
Edward  Ployden   a  patent   for  New  Albion.     The    ^^^^^ 
county  never   existed,   except    on    parchment.     The 
lord  palatine  attempted  a  settlement;   but,  for  want  of  a 
pilot,  he  entered  the  Chesapeake ;  and  his  people  were  ab- 
sorbed in  the  happy  province  of  Virginia.     He  was  never 
able  to  dispossess  the  Swedes. 

With  the  Swedes,  therefore,  powerful  competitors  for  the 
tobacco  of  Virginia  and  the  beaver  of  the  Schuylkill,  the 
Dutch  were  to  contend  for  the  banks  of  the  Delaware.     Li 
the  vicinity  of  the  river,  the   Swedish  company  was  more 
powerful  than  its  rival ;   but  the  whole  province  of  New 
Netherland  was  tenfold  more  populous  than  New  Sweden. 
From  motives  of  commercial  security,  the  Dutch  built 
Fort  Casimir,  on  the  site  of  Newcastle,  within  five       i65i. 
miles  of  Christiana,  near  the  mouth  of  the  Brandy- 
wine.    To  the  Swedes  this  seemed  an  encroachment ; 
jealousies  ensued ;  and  at  last,  aided  by  stratagem  and       1654. 
immediate  superiority  in  numbers.  Rising,  the  Swed- 
ish governor,  overpowered   the   garrison.     The   ag- 
gression was  fatal  to  the  only  colony  which   Sweden  had 
planted.      That  kingdom  was  exhausted  by  a  long 
succession  of  wars ;  the  statesmen  and  soldiers  whom       J^^g* 
Gustavus  had  educated  had  passed  from  the  public 
service ;  Oxenstiern,  after  adorning  retirement  by  the  sub- 
lime pursuits  of  philosophy,  was  no  more ;  a  youthful   and 
licentious  queen,  greedy  of  literary  distinction,  and  without 
capacity  for  government,  had  impaired  the  strength  of  the 
kingdom  by  nursing  contending  factions,  and  then   capri- 
ciously  abdicating    the    throne.      Sweden    had    ceased   to 
awaken  fear,  and   the  Dutch   comi:)any  commanded 
Stuyvesant  to   "revenge  their  wrong,  to  drive  the  NoT^ie. 
Swedes  from  the  river,  or  compel  their  submission." 
The  order  was  renewed ;  and  in   September,  1655,       1655. 
after  they  had  maintained  their  separate  existence 


56  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXII. 

for  a  little  more  than  seventeen  years,  the  Dutch  gov- 
ernor, collecting  a  force  of  more  than  six  hundred  men, 
sailed  into  the  Delaware  with  the  purpose  of  conquest. 
Resistance  would  have  been  unavailing.  One  fort 
Sep?'25.  after  another  surrendered  :  to  Rising  honorable  terms 
were  conceded ;  the  colonists  were  promised  the  quiet 
possession  of  their  estates ;  and,  in  defiance  of  protests  and 
the  turbulence  of  the  Scandinavians,  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
Dutch  was  established.  Such  was  the  end  of  New  Sweden, 
the  colony  that  connects  our  country  with  Gustavus  Adol- 
phus  and  the  nations  that  dwell  on  the  Gulf  of  Bothnia. 
The  descendants  of  the  colonists,  in  the  course  of  genera- 
tions, widely  scattered  and  blended  with  emigrants  of  other 
lineage,  constituted  perhaps  more  than  one  part  in  two 
hundred  of  the  population  of  our  country  in  the  early  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  At  the  surrender,  they  did  not 
much  exceed  seven  hundred  souls.  Free  from  ambition, 
ignorant  of  the  ideas  which  were  convulsing  the  English 
mind,  it  was  only  as  Protestants  that  they  shared  the  im- 
pulse of  the  age.  They  cherished  the  calm  earnestness  of 
religious  feeling ;  they  reverenced  the  bonds  of  family  and 
the  purity  of  morals ;  their  children,  under  every  disadvan- 
tage of  want  of  teachers  and  of  Swedish  books,  were  well 
instructed.  With  the  natives  they  preserved  peace.  A 
love  for  Sweden,  their  dear  mother  country,  the  abiding 
sentiment  of  loyalty  towards  its  sovereign,  continued  to  dis- 
tinguish them ;  at  Stockholm,  they  remained  for  a  century 
the  objects  of  a  disinterested  and  generous  regard  ;  affection 
united  them  in  the  New  World ;  and  a  part  of  their  de- 
scendants still  preserv^e  their  altar  and  their  dwellings  round 
the  graves  of  their  fathers. 

The  conquest  of  the  Swedish  settlements  was  fol- 
low^ed  by  relations  bearing  a  near  analogy  to  the  pro- 
vincial system  of  Rome.     The  West  India  company  desired 
an  ally  on  its  southern  frontier ;  the  country  above  Chris- 
tiana was  governed  by  Stuyvesant's  deputy;  while 
Dec.       the   city  of  Amsterdam    became,  by  purchase,  the 
proprietary  of   Delaware,  from  the  Brandywine  to 
1659.       Bombay  Hook ;  and  afterwards,  under  cessions  from 


1655.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  57 

the  natives,  extended  its  jurisdiction  to  Cape  Henlo- 
pen.  But  did  a  city  ever  govern  a  province  with 
forbearance  ?  The  noble  and  right  honorable  lords,  \llf 
the  burgomasters  of  Amsterdam,  instituted  a  para- 
lyzing commercial  monopoly,  and  required  of  the  colonists 
an  oath  of  absolute  obedience  to  all  their  past  or  future 
commands.  But  Maryland  was  free;  Virginia  governed 
itself.  The  restless  colonists,  almost  as  they  landed,  and 
even  the  soldiers  of  the  garrison,  fled  from  the  dominion  of 
Amsterdam  to  the  liberties  of  English  colonies.  The  at- 
tempt to  elope  was  punishable  by  death,  and  scarce  thirty 
families  remained. 

Dui-ing  the  absence  of  Stuyvesant  from  Manhat-  1655. 
tan,  the  warriors  of  the  neighboring  Algonkin  tribes,  ^®p** 
never  reposing  confidence  in  the  Dutch,  made  a  desperate 
assault  on  the  colony.  In  sixty-four  canoes,  they  appeared 
before  the  town,  and  ravaged  the  adjacent  country.  The 
return  of  the  expedition  restored  confidence.  The  captives 
were  ransomed,  and  industry  repaired  its  losses.  The  Dutch 
seemed  to  have  firmly  established  their  power,  and  promised 
themselves  happier  years.  New  Netherland  consoled  them 
for  the  loss  of  Brazil.  They  exulted  in  the  possession  of  an 
admirable  territory,  that  needed  no  embankments  against 
the  ocean.  They  were  proud  of  its  vast  extent,  from  New 
England  to  Maryland,  from  the  sea  to  the  Great  River  of 
Canada,  and  the  remote  north-western  wilderness.  They 
sounded  with  exultation  the  channel  of  the  deep  stream, 
which  was  no  longer  shared  with  the  Swedes ;  they  counted 
with  delight  its  many  lovely  runs  of  water,  on  which  the 
beavers  built  their  villages ;  and  the  great  travellers  who 
had  visited  every  continent,  as  they  ascended  the  Delaware, 
declared  it  one  of  the  noblest  rivers  in  the  world,  with 
banks  more  inviting  than  the  lands  on  the  Amazon. 

Meantime,  the  country  near  the  Hudson  gained  by  in- 
creasing emigration.  Manhattan  was  already  the  chosen 
abode  of  merchants;  and  the  policy  of  the  government 
invited  them  by  its  good-will.  If  Stuyvesant  sometimes 
displayed  the  rash  despotism  of  a  soldier,  he  was  sure  to  be 
reproved  by  his  employers.     Did  he  change  the  rate  of   * 


58  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 

duties  arbitrarily,  the  directors,  sensitive  to  com- 
^mo!*    niercial  honor,  charged  him  "  to  keep  every  contract 

inviolate."  Did  he  tamper  with  the  currency  by 
raising  the  nominal  value  of  foreign  coin,  the  measure  was 
rebuked  as  dishonest.  Did  he  attempt  to  fix  the  price  of 
labor  by  arbitrary  rules,  this  also  was  condemned  as  unwise 
and  impracticable.  Did  he  interfere  with  the  merchants  by 
inspecting  their  accounts,  the  deed  was  censured  as  without 
precedent  "in  Christendom;"  and  he  was  ordered  to  "treat 
the  merchants  with  kindness,  lest  they  return,  and  the 
country  be  depopulated."  Did  his  zeal  for  Calvinism  lead 
him  to  persecute  Lutherans,  he  was  chid  for  his  bigotry. 
Did  his  hatred  of  "the  abominable  sect  of  Quakers"  im- 
prison and  afterwards  exile  the  blameless  Bowne,  "  let  every 
peaceful  citizen,"  wrote  the  directors,  "enjoy  freedom  of 
conscience ;  this  maxim  has  made  our  city  the  asylum  for 
fugitives  from  every  land ;  tread  in  its  steps,  and  you  shall 
be  blessed." 

Private  worship  was  therefore  allowed  to  every  religion. 
Opinion,  if  not  yet  enfranchised,  was  already  tolerated. 
The  people  of  Palestine,  from  the  destruction  of  their 
temple  an  outcast  and  a  wandering  race,  were  allured  by 
the  traffic  and  the  condition  of  the  New  World  ;  and  not  the 
Saxon  and  Celtic  races  only,  the  children  of  the  bondmen 
that  broke  from  slavery  in  Egypt,  the  posterity  of  those 
who  had  wandered  in  Arabia,  and  worshipped  near  Calvary, 
found  a  home,  liberty,  and  a  burial-place  on  the  Island  of 
Manhattan. 

The  emigrants  from  Holland  were  themselves  of  the  most 
various  lineage  ;  for  Holland  had  long  been  the  gathering- 
place  of  the  unfortunate.  Could  we  trace  the  descent  of 
the  emigrants  from  the  Low  Countries  to  New  Netherland, 
we  should  be  carried  not  only  to  the  banks  of  the  Rhine 
and  the  borders  of  the  German  Sea,  but  to  the  Protestants 
who  escaped  from  France  after  the  massacre  of  Bartholo- 
mew's eve,  and  to  those  earlier  inquirers  who  were  swayed 
by  the  voice  of  Huss  in  the  heart  of  Bohemia.  New  York 
was  always  a  city  of  the  world.  Its  settlers  were  relics  of 
the  first-fruits  of  the  Reformation,  chosen  from  the  Belgic 


1656.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  59 

provinces  and  England,  from  France  and  Bohemia,  from 
Germany  and  Switzerland,  from  Piedmont  and  the  Italian 
Alps. 

The  religious  sects,  which,  in  the  middle  ages,  had  been 
fostered  by  the  municipal  liberties  of  the  south  of  France, 
were  the  harbingers  of  modern  freedom,  and  had  therefore 
been  sacrificed  to  the  inexorable  feudalism  of  the  north. 
After  a  bloody  conflict,  the  plebeian  reformers,  crushed  by 
the  merciless  leaders  of  the  military  aristocracy,  escaped 
to  the  highlands  that  divide  France  and  Italy.  Preserving 
the  discipline  of  a  benevolent,  ascetic  morality,  with  the 
simplicity  of  a  spiritual  worship, 

"  When  all  our  fathers  worshipped  stocks  and  stones," 
it  was  found,  on  the  progress  of  the  Reformation,  that  they 
had  by  three  centuries  anticipated  Luther  and  Calvin.     The 
hurricane  of  persecution,  which  was   to  have  swept  Prot- 
estantism from  the  earth,   did  not  spare  their  seclusion  ; 
mothers  with  infants  were  rolled  down  the  rocks,  and  the 
bones  of  martyrs  scattered  on  the  Alpine  mountains. 
The  city  of  Amsterdam  offered  the  fugitive  Wal-  jyll^{Q^ 
denses  a  free  passage  to  America,  and  a  welcome 
was  prepared  in  New  Netherland  for  the  few  who  were 
willing  to  emigrate. 

The  persecuted  of  every  creed  and  every  clime  were 
invited  to  the  colony.  When  the  Protestant  churches  in 
Kochelle  were  razed,  the  Calvinists  of  that  city  were  gladly 
admitted ;  and  the  French  Protectants  came  in  such  num- 
bers that  the  public  documents  were  sometimes  issued 
in  French  as  well  as  in  Dutch  and  English.  Troops  of 
orphans  were  shipped  for  the  milder  destinies  of  the 
New  World ;  a  free  passage  was  offered  to  mechanics ; 
for  "population  was  known  to  be  the  bulwark  of  every 
state."  The  government  of  New  Netherland  had  formed 
just  ideas  of  the  fit  materials  for  building  a  common- 
wealth ;  they  desired  "  farmers  and  laborers,  foreigners 
and  exiles,  men  inured  to  toil  and  penury."  The  colony 
increased ;  children  swarmed  in  every  village ;  the  advent 
of  the  year  and  the  month  of  May  were  welcomed  with 
noisy  frolics :  new  modes  of  activity  were  devised ;  lumber 


60  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 

was  shipped  to  France ;  the  whale  pursued  off  the  coast ; 
the  vine,  the  mulberry,  planted  ;  flocks  of  sheep  as  well 
as   cattle    were    multiplied ;    and    tile,   so    long    imported 

from  Holland,  began  to  be  manufactured  near  Fort 
1664.       Orange.      New  Amsterdam   could,  in   a  few  years, 

boast  of  stately  buildings,  and  almost  vied  with  Bos- 
ton. *'  This  happily  situated  province,"  said  its  inhabitants, 
'"may  become  the  granary  of  our  fatherland;  should  our 
Netherlands  be  wasted  by  grievous  wars,  it  will  offer  our 
countrymen  a  safe  retreat ;  by  God's  blessing,  we  shall  in  a 
few  years  become  a  mighty  people." 

Thus  did  various  nations  of  the  Caucasian  race  assist  in 
colonizing  our  central  states.  The  African  also  had  his 
portion  on  the  Hudson.  The  West  India  company,  which 
sometimes  transported  Indian  captives  to  the  West  Indies, 

having  large  establishments  on  the  coast  of  Guinea, 
1626.       at  an  early  day  introduced  negroes  into  Manhattan, 

and  continued  the  negro  slave-trade  without  remorse. 
We  have  seen  Elizabeth  of  England  a  partner  in  the  com- 
merce, of  which  the  Stuarts,  to  the  days  of  Queen  Anne, 
were  distinguished  patrons  ;  the  city  of  Amsterdam  did  not 
blush  to  own  shares  in  a  slave-ship,  to  advance  money  for 

the  outfits,  and  to  participate  in  the  returns.  In  pro- 
1G64.       portion  to  population,  New  York  had  imported  as 

many  Africans  as  Virginia.  That  New  York  is  not 
a  slave  state  like  Carolina  is  due  to  climate,  and  not  to 
the  supeVior  humanity  of  its  founders.  Stuyvesant  was 
instructed  to  use  every  exertion  to  promote  the  sale  of 
negroes.  They  were  imported  sometimes  by  way  of  the 
West  Indies,  often  directly  from  Guinea,  and  were  sold  at 
public  auction  to  the  highest  bidder.  The  average  price 
was  less. than  one  hundred  and  forty  dollars.  The  monop- 
oly of  the  traffic  was  not  strictly  enforced  ;  and  a  change  of 
policy  sometimes  favored  the  export  of  negroes  to  the  Eng- 
lish colonies.  The  enfranchised  negro  might  become  a  free- 
holder. 

With  the  Africans  came  the  African  institution  of  abject 
slavery ;  the  large  emigrations  from  Connecticut  engrafted 
on  New  Netherland  the  Puritan  idea  of  popular  freedom. 


1660.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  61 

There  were  so  many  English  at  Manhattan  as  to  require  an 
English  secretary,  preachers  who  could  speak  in  English  as 
well  as  in  Dutch,  and  a  publication  of  civil  ordinances  in 
English.  Whole  towns  had  been  settled  by  New  England 
men,  who,  having  come  to  America  to  serve  God  with  a 
pure  conscience,  and  desiring  to  provide  for  the  outward 
comforts  and  souls'  welfare  of  their  posterities,  planted 
New  England  liberties  in  a  Congregational  way,  with  the 
consent  and  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Dutch.  Their 
presence  and  their  activity  foretold  a  revolution. 

In  the  fatherland,  the  power  of  the  people  was  unknown ; 
in  New  Netherland,  the  necessities  of  the  colony  had  given 
it  a  twilight  existence,  and  delegates  from  the  Dutch  towns, 
at  first  twelve,  then  perhaps  eight  in  number,  had 
mitigated  the  arbitrary  authority  of  Kieft.      There       1642. 
was  no  distinct  concession  of  legislative  power  to  the 
people  ;  but  the  people  had,  without  a  teacher,  become  con- 
vinced of  the  right  of  resistance.     The  brewers  re- 
fused  to   pay   an   arbitrary   excise  :   "  Were   we  to  Au^ts 
yield,"  said  they,  "  we  should  offend  the  eight  men, 
and  the  whole  commonalty."     The  large  proprietaries  did 
not  favor  popular  freedom ;  the  commander  of  Kens- 
selaer  Stein  had  even   raised  a  battery,  that  "  the       i644. 
canker  of  freemen  "  might  not  enter  the  manor  ;  but 
the  patrons  cheerfully  joined  the  free  boors  in  resist- 
ing  arbitrary   taxation.     As    a   compromise,  it  was       1647. 
proposed   that,   from   a   double    nomination   by  the 
villages,  the   governor  should    appoint  tribunes,  to    act   as 
magistrates  in   trivial   cases,  and  as  agents  for  the  towns, 
to  give  their  opinion  whenever  they  should  be  consulted. 
Town-meetings  were    absolutely  prohibited. 

Discontents  increased.     Vander  Donk   and   others  were 
charged  with  leaving  nothing  untried  to  abjure  what 
they   called  the  galling   yoke  of   an   arbitrary  gov-    ^1^2'** 
ernment.     A   commission   repaired   to    Holland   for 
redress ;  as  farmers,  they  claimed  the  liberties  essen-       i650. 
tial  to  the  prosperity  of  agriculture ;  as  merchants, 
they  protested  against  the  intolerable  burden  of  the  cus- 
toms ,  and,  when  redress  was  refused,  tyranny  was  followed 


62  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 

by  its  usual  consequence,  clandestine  associations  against 
oppression.  The  excess  of  complaint  obtained  for 
Aprh.  New  Amsterdam  a  court  of  justice  like  that  of  the 
metropolis ;  but  the  municipal  liberties  included  no 
political  franchise;  the  sheriff  was  appointed  by  the  gov- 
ernor ;  the  two  burgomasters  and  five  schepens  made  a 
double  nomination  of  their  own  successors,  from  which 
*'  the  valiant  director  himself  elected  the  board."  The  city 
had  privileges,  not  the  citizens.  The  province  gained  only 
the  municipal  liberties,  on  which  rested  the  commercial 
aristocracy  of  Holland.  Citizenship  was  a  commercial  priv- 
ilege, and  not  a  political  enfranchisement.  It  was  not  much 
more  than  a  license  to  trade. 

The  system  was  at  war  with  Puritan  usages ;  the  Dutch 
in   the    colony   always   relied    on   themselves;   and 
1653.       the  persevering  restlessness   of  the  people  led  to  a 
^ec.*^   general  assembly  of  two  deputies  from  each  village 
in  New  Netherland ;  an  assembly  which  Stuyvesant 
was  unwilling  to  sanction,  and  could  not  prevent.     As  in 
Massachusetts,  this  first  convention  sprung  from  the 
Dec.       will  of  the  people  ;  and  it  claimed  the  right  of  delib- 
erating on  the  civil  condition  of  the  country. 
"  The  states-general  of  the  United  Provinces,"  such  was 
the  remonstrance  and  petition,  drafted  by  George  Baxter, 
and  unanimously  adopted  by  the  convention,  "  are  our  liege 
lords ;   we  submit  to  the  laws  of  the  United  Provinces ; 
and  our  rights  and  privileges  ought  to  be  in  harmony  with 
those  of  the  fatherland,  for  we  are  a  member  of  the  state, 
and  not  a  subjugated  people.    We,  who  have  come  together 
from  various  parts  of  the  world,  and  are  a  blended  commu- 
nity of  various  lineage ;  we,  who  have,  at  our  own  expense, 
exchanged  our  native  lands  for  the  protection  of  the  United 
Provinces;  we,  who  have  transformed  the  wilderness  into 
fruitful  farms,  —  demand  that  no  new  laws  shall  be  enacted 
but  with  consent  of  the  people,  that  none  shall  be  appointed 
to  office  but  with  the  approbation  of  the  people,  that  obscure 
and  obsolete  laws  shall  never  be  revived." 

Stuyvesant  was  taken  by  surprise.     He  never  had  faith 
in  "  the  wavering  multitude ; "  and  doubts  of  man's  capacity 


1658.  NEW  JSTETHERLAND.  63 

for  self-government  dictated  his  reply.  "Will  you  set  your 
names  to  the  visionary  notions  of  an  Englishman  ?  Is  there 
no  one  of  the  Netherlands'  nation  able  to  draft  your  peti- 
tion ?  And  your  prayer  is  so  extravagant,  you  might  as 
well  claim  to  send  delegates  to  the  assembly  of  their  high 
mightinesses  themselves. 

1.  "Laws  will  be  made  by  the  director  and  council.  Evil 
manners  produce  good  laws  for  their  restraint ;  and  there- 
fore the  laws  of  New  Netherland  are  good. 

2.  "  Shall  the  people  elect  their  own  officers  ?  If  this 
rule  become  our  cynosure,  and  the  election  of  magistrates 
be  left  to  the  rabble,  every  man  will  vote  for  one  of  his  own 
stamp.  The  thief  will  vote  for  a  thief  ;  the  smuggler  for  a 
smuggler;  and  fraud  and  vice  will  become  privileged. 

3.  "  The  old  laws  remain  in  force  ;  directors  will  never 
make  themselves  responsible  to  subjects." 

The  delegates,  in  their  rejoinder,  appealed  to  their  1653. 
inalienable  rights.  "  We  do  but  design  the  general  ^^^-  ^^• 
good  of  the  country  and  the  maintenance  of  freedom ;  nat- 
ure permits  all  men  to  constitute  society,  and  assemble  for 
the  protection  of  liberty  and  property."  Stuyvesant,  hav- 
ing exhausted  his  arguments,  could  reply  only  by  an  act 
of  power;  and,  dissolving  the  assembly,  he  commanded 
its  members  to  separate  on  pain  of  arbitrary  punishment. 
"  We  derive  our  authority  from  God  and  the  West  India 
company,  not  from  the  pleasure  of  a  few  ignorant  subjects : " 
such  was  his  farewell  message  to  the  convention  which  he 
dispersed. 

The  West  India  company  declared  this  resistance  to 
arbitrary  taxation  to  be  "  contrary  to  the  maxims  of  every 
enlightened  government."  "We  approve  the  taxes  you 
propose,"  —  thus  they  wrote  to  Stuyvesant;  "have  no  re- 
gard to  the  consent  of  the  people ; "  "  let  them  indulge  no 
longer  the  visionary  dream  that  taxes  can  be  imposed  only 
with  their  consent."  But  the  people  continued  to  indulge 
the  dream ;  taxes  could  not  be  collected ;  and  the 
colonists,  in  their  desire  that  popular  freedom  might  ^1^*** 
prove  more  than  a  vision,  listened  with  complacency 


64  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 

to  the  hope  of  obtaining  English  liberties  by  submitting  to 
English  jurisdiction. 

Cromwell  had  planned  the  conquest  of  New  Netherland  ; 
in  the  days  of  his  son,  the  design  was  revived ;  and  the 
restoration  of  Charles  II.  threatened  New  Netherland  with 
danger  from  the  south,  the  north,  and  from  England. 

In  previous  negotiations  with  the  agent  of  Lord 
1659.       Baltimore,  the  envoy  of  New  Netherland  had  firmly 
maintained  the  right  of  the  Dutch  to  the  southern 
bank  of  the  Delaware,  pleading  purchase  and  colonization 
before  the  patent  to  /Lord   Baltimore  had   been   granted. 
The  facts  were  conceded ;  but,  in  the  pride  of  strength,  it 
was  answered  that  the  same  plea  had  not  availed  Claybome, 
and  should  not  avail  the  Dutch.     On  the  restoration,  Lord 
Baltimore  renewed  his  claims  to  the  country  from   New- 
castle to  Cape  Henlopen ;  they  were  defended  by  his  agents 
in  Amsterdam  and  in  America,  and  were  even  presented  to 
the  states-general  of  the  United  Provinces.     The  college  of 
nineteen  of  the  West  India  company  was  inflexible  ; 
Se^^'i.   coiiscious  of  its  rights,  it  refused  to  surrender  its  pos- 
sessions, and  resolved  "  to  defend  them  even  to  the 
spilling  of   blood."      Beekman,  the   Dutch   lieutenant-gov- 
ernor on  the  Delaware,  was  faithful  to  his  trust;  the  juris- 
diction of  his   country  was   maintained ;    and  when 
^1664^    young  Baltimore,  with   his   train,  appeared   at   the 
mouth   of  the   Brandywine,  he   was  honored   as   a 
guest ;  but  the  proprietary  claims  of  his  father  were  trium- 
phantly resisted.     The  Dutch  and  Swedes  and  Finns  kept 
the  country  safely  for  William  Penn.     At  last,  the  West 
India  company,  desiring  a  barrier  against  the  English 
^^nd  ^^  *^®  south,  transferred  the  whole  country  on  the 
July-   Delaware  to  the  city  of  Amsterdam.     The  banks  of 
the  river  from  Cape  Henlopen  to  the  falls  at  Trenton 
certainly  remained  under  the  jurisdiction    of   the    Dutch. 
In  the  interior,  the  salt  springs  of  Syracuse  were  discovered 
by  the  Jesuits  in  1654 ;  and  in  the  course  of  two  following 
years  the  place  was  occupied  by  a  colony  of  the  French. 

With  Virginia,  during  the  protectorate,  the  most  ami- 
cable   relations    had  been   confirmed   by  reciprocal    cour- 


1663.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  65 

tesies.     Even  during  the  war  between  England  and       1653. 
Holland,   friendly   intercourse   had    continued ;    for 
why,  it  was  said,  should  there  be  strife  between  old  friends 
and  neighbors,  brothers  in  Christ,  dwelling  in  countries  so 
far  from  Europe  ?     Commerce,  if  interrupted  by  a  transient 
hesitancy  as  to  its  security,  soon  recovered  its  freedom,  and 
was  sometimes  conducted  even  with  Europe  by  way 
of  Virginia.    Equal  rights  in  the  colonial  courts  wefre       1659. 
reciprocally  secured  by  treaty.    But,  upon  the  restora- 
tion, the  act  of  navigation,  at  first  evaded,  was  soon 
enforced  ;   and  by  degrees  Berkeley,  whose  brother  jJ,^io. 
coveted  the  soil  of  New  Jersey,  threatened  hostility. 
Clouds  gathered  in  the  south.   . 

In  the  north,  affairs  were  still  more  lowering.     Massachu- 
setts did  not  relinquish  its  right  to  an  indefinite  extension 
of  its  territory  to  the  west ;  and  the  people  of  Connecticut 
not  only  increased  their  pretensions  on  Long  Island, 
but,  regardless  of   the  provisionary  treaty,  claimed        q^j* 
West  Chester,  and  were  steadily  advancing  towards 
the  Hudson.     To  stay  these  encroachments,  Stuyve- 
sant   himself   repaired  to    Boston,   and    entered   his      g^^; 
complaints  to  the  convention  of  the  united  colonies. 
His  voyage  was  a  confession  of  weakness  ;   Massachusetts 
maintained  a  neutrality,  and  Connecticut  demanded  delay. 
An  embassy  to  Hartford  renewed  the  language  of  remon- 
strance with  no  better  success.    Did  the  Dutch  assert 
their  original  grant  from  the    states-general,  it  was      j^^^ 
interpreted  as  conveying  no  more  than  a   commer- 
cial privilege.     Did  they  plead  discovery,  purchase  from 
the  natives,  and  long  possession,  it  was  replied  that  Con- 
necticut, by  its  charter,  extended  to  the  Pacific.     "  Where, 
then,"  demanded  the  Dutcli  negotiators,  "where    is   New 
Netherland?"     And  the  agents  of  Connecticut,  with  pro- 
voking indifference,  replied:  '^We  do  not  know." 

These  unavailing  discussions  were  conducted  during  the 
horrors  of  a  half-year's  war  with  the  savages  round  Esopus. 
The  rising  village  on  the  banks  of  that  stream  was 
laid   waste ;   many  of   its   inhabitants   murdered   or     June, 
made  captive  ;  and  it  was  only  on  the  approach  of      Nov. 

VOL.  II.  6 


66  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXII. 

winter  that  an  armistice  restored  tranquillity.  The  colony 
had  no  friend  but  the  Mohawks.  "  The  Dutch,"  said  the 
faithful  warriors  of  the  Five  Nations,  "  are  our  brethren. 
"With  them  we  keep  but  one  council  fire  ;  we  are  united  by 
a  covenant  chain." 

The  contest  with  the  natives,  not  less  than  with  New 
England,  displayed  the  feebleness  of  New  Netherland. 
The  prot-ince  had  no  popular  freedom,  and  therefore  had 
no  public  spirit.  In  New  England,  there  were  no  poor ;  in 
New  Netherland,  the  poor  were  so  numerous  it  was  diffi- 
cult to  provide  for  their  relief.  The  Puritans  easily  sup- 
ported schools  everywhere,  and  Latin  schools  in  their  larger 
villages ;  on  Manhattan,  a  Latin  school  lingered  with  diffi- 
culty through  two  years,  and  was  discontinued.  In  New 
England,  the  people,  in  the  hour  of  danger,  rose  involunta- 
rily, and  defended  themselves  ;  in  the  Dutch  province,  men 
were  unwilling  to  go  to  the  relief  even  of  villages  that  were 
in  danger  from  the  Indians,  and  demanded  protection  from 
the  company,  which  claimed  to  be  their  absolute  sovereign. 
1663,  The  necessities  of  the  times  wrung  from  Stuyve- 
^°^-  ^-  sant  the  concession  of  an  assembly ;  the  delegates  of 
the  villages  would  only  appeal  to  the  states-general  and  to 
the  West  India  company  for  protection.  But  the  states- 
general  had,  as  it  were,  invited  aggression  by  abstaining 
from  every  public  act  which  should  pledge  their  honor  to 
the  defence  of  the  province ;  and  the  West  India  company 
was  too  penurious  to  risk  its  funds,  where  victory  was  so 

hazardous.  A  new  and  more  full  diet  was  held  in 
AMii.     *^^  spring  of  1664.     Rumors  of  an  intended  invasion 

from  England  had  reached  the  colony ;  and  the  popu- 
lar representatives,  having  remonstrated  against  the  want 
of  all  means  of  defence,  and  foreseeing  the  necessity  of  sub- 
mitting to  the  English,  demanded  plainly  of  Stuyvesant: 
"  If  you  cannot  protect  us,  to  whom  shall  we  turn  ?  "  The 
governor,  faithful  to  his  trust,  proposed  the  enlistment  "of 
every  third  man,  as  had  more  than  once  been  done  in  the 
fatherland."  And  thus  Manhattan  was  left  without  de- 
fence ;  the  people  would  not  expose  life  for  the  West  India 
company ;  and  the  company  would  not  risk  bankruptcy  for 


1664.  NEW  NETHEELAND.  67 

a  colony  which  it  vahied  chiefly  as  property.     The  estab- 
lished government  could  not  but  fall  into  contempt. 
In  vain  was  the  libeller  of  the  magistrates  fastened  Ma^fiia. 
to  a  stake,  with  a  bridle  in  his  mouth.     Stuyvesant 
confessed  his  fear  of  the  colonists:  "To  ask  aid  of  Jane 2. 
the  English  villages  would  be  inviting  the    Trojan 
horse  within  our  walls."     "I  have  not  time  to  tell   Aug. 4. 
how  the  company  is  cursed  and  scolded ;  the  inhabi- 
tants declare  that  the  Dutch  have  never   had  a  right    to 
the  country."     Half  Long  Island  had  revolted  ;  the  settle- 
ments on  the  Esopus  wavered;  the  Connecticut  men  had 
purchased  of  the  Indians  all  the  sea-board  as  far  as  the  North 
River.     Such  were  the  narratives  of  Stuyvesant  to  his  em-; 
ployers. 

In  the  mean  time  the  united  provinces  could  not  expect  a 
war  with  England.     No  cause  for  war  existed  except  Eng- 
lish envy  of  the  commercial  glory  and  prosperity  of  Holland. 
In  confidence  of  peace,  the   countrymen   of   Grotius  were 
planning  liberal  councils ;  at  home,  they  designed  an  aban- 
donment of  the  protective  system  and  concessions  to  free 
trade ;  in  the  Mediterranean,  their  fleet,  under  De  Ruyter, 
was  preparing  to  suppress  the  piracies  of  the  Barbary  states. 
At  that  very  time  the  English  were  engaging  in  a  piratical 
expedition  against  the  Dutch  possessions  on  the  coast  of 
Guinea.     The  king  had  also,  with  equal  indifference       Feb. 
to  the  chartered  rights  of  Connecticut  and  the  claims 
of  the  Netherlands,  "  by  the  most  despotic  instrument  re- 
corded in  the  colonial  archives  of  England,"  granted 
to  the  Duke  of  York,  not  only  the  country  from  the  Mar.  12. 
Kennebec  to  the  St.  Croix,  but  the  territory  from  the 
Connecticut  River  to  the  shores   of  the   Delaware;    and, 
under  the  conduct  of  Richard  Nicolls,  groom  of  the  bed- 
chamber to  the  Duke  of  York,  the  English  squadron, 
which  carried  the  commissioners  for  New  England  to  July  23. 
Boston,  having  demanded  recruits  in  Massachusetts, 
and  received  on  board  the  governor  of  Connecticut,  Aug.  28. 
cast  anchor  in  Gravesend  Bay.     Long  Island  was  lost ; 
soldiers  from  New  England  pitched  their  camp  near  Breuke- 
len  ferry. 


68  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXII. 

,gg4  In   Kew   Amsterdam  there  existed  a  division  of 

Aug.  30.  counsels.  Stuyvesant,  faithful  to  his  employers, 
struggled  to  maintain  their  interests ;  the  municipality, 
conscious  that  the  town  was  at  the  mercy  of  the  English 
fleet,  desired  to  avoid  bloodshed  by  a  surrender.  A  joint 
committee  from  the  governor  and  the  city  having  demanded 
of  Nicolls  the  cause  of  his  presence,  he  replied  by  requiring 
of  Stuyvesant  the  immediate  acknowledgment  of  English 
sovereignty,  with  the  condition  of  security  to  the  inhabi- 
tants in  life,  liberty,  and  property.  At  the  same  time, 
Winthrop  of  Connecticut,  whose  love  of  peace  and  candid 
affection  for  the  Dutch  nation  had  been  acknowledged  by 
the  West  India  company,  advised  his  personal  friends  to 
offer  no  resistance.  "  The  surrender,"  Stuyvesant 
Sept.  1.  nobly  answered,  "  would  be  reproved  in  the  father- 
land." The  burgomasters,  unable  to  obtain  a  copy 
of  the  letter  from  Nicolls,  summoned  not  a  town-meeting, — 
that  had  been  inconsistent  with  the  manners  of  the  Dutch, 
—  but  the  principal  inhabitants  to  the  public  hall,  where  it 
was  resolved  that  the  community  ought  to  know  all 
Sept.  2.  that  related  to  its  welfare.  On  a  more  urgent  demand 
for  the  letter  from  the  English  commander,  Stuyvesant 
angrily  tore  it  in  pieces ;  and  the  burgomasters,  instead  of 
resisting  the  invasion,  spent  their  time  in  framing 
Sept.  3.  a  protest  against  the  governor.  On  the  next  day,  a 
new  deputation  repaired  to  the  fleet ;  but  Nicolls  de- 
clined discussion.  "When  may  we  visit  you  again?"  said 
the  commissioners.  "  On  Thursday,"  replied  Nicolls ;  "  for 
to-morrow  I  will  speak  with  you  at  Manhattan."  "  Friends," 
it  was  smoothly  answered,  "are  very  welcome  there." 
"  Raise  the  white  flag  of  peace,"  said  the  English  comman- 
der, "for  I  shall  come  with  ships-of-war  and  soldiers."  The 
commissioners  returned  to  advocate  the  capitulation,  which 
was  quietly  effected  on  the  following  days.  The  aristocratic 
liberties  of  Holland  yielded  to  the  hope  of  popular  liberties 
like  those  of  New  England. 

The  articles  of  surrender,  framed  under  the  auspices  of 
the  municipal  authority,  by  the  mediation  of  the  younger 
Winthrop  and  Pynchon,  accepted  by  the  magistrates  and 


1665. 


NEW  NETHERLAND.  69 


Other  inhabitants  assembled  in  the  town-hall,  and  ^^q^ 
not  ratified  by  Stuyvesant  till  the  surrender  had  vir-  Sept.  8. 
tually  been  made,  promised  security  to  the  customs,  the 
religion,  the  municipal  institutions,  the  possessions  of  the 
Dutch.  The  enforcement  of  the  navigation  act  was  delayed 
for  six  months.  During  that  period,  direct  intercourse  with 
Holland  remained  free.  The  towns  were  still  to  choose 
their  own  magistrates,  and  Manhattan,  now  first  known  as 
Kew  York,  to  elect  its  deputies,  with  free  voices  in  all  public 
affairs. 

Very  few   of  the   colonists   embarked   for   Holland ;    it 
seemed,  rather,  that   English   liberties  were   to   be 
added  to  the  security  of  property.     In  a  few  days,  Sept.  24. 
Fort  Orange,  now  named  Albany,  from  the  Scottish 
title  of    the  Duke   of  York,  quietly  surrendered ;  and  the 
league  with  the  Five  Nations  was  renewed.     Early 
in   October,  the   Dutch    and    Swedes    on  the    Dela-     Oct.i. 
ware  capitulated;    and  for  the  first  time  the  whole 
Atlantic  coast  of  the  old  thirteen  states  was  in  possession 
of  England.     Our  country  had  obtained  geographical  unity. 

The  dismemberment  of  New  Netherland  ensued  june 
on  its  surrender.  Two  months  before  the  conquest,  ^^'  ^' 
the  Duke  of  York  had  assigned  to  Lord  Berkeley  and  Sir 
George  Carteret,  both  proprietaries  of  Carolina,  the  land 
between  the  Hudson  and  the  Delaware.  In  honor  of  Car- 
teret, the  territory,  with  nearly  the  same  bounds  as  at  pres- 
ent, except  on  the  north,  received  the  name  of  New  Jersey. 
If  to  fix  boundaries  and  grant  the  soil  could  constitute  a 
state,  the  Duke  of  York  gave  political  existence  to  a  com- 
monwealth. Its  moral  character  was  moulded  by  New 
England  Puritans,  English  Quakers,  and  dissenters  from 
Scotland. 

Meantime,  avarice  paid  its  homage  to  freedom;  i665. 
and  the  royalists,  who  were  become  lords  of  the  soil,  ^^^-  ^^• 
indifferent  to  liberty,  sought  to  foster  their  province  by 
most  liberal  concessions.  Security  of  persons  and  property 
under  laws  to  be  made  by  an  assembly  composed  of  the  gov- 
ernor and  council,  and  at  least  an  equal  number  of  representa- 
tives of  the  people ;  freedom  from  taxation  except  by  the 


"^0  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 

colonial  assembly ;  a  combined  opposition  of  the  people  and 
the  proprietaries  to  any  arbitrary  impositions  from  Eng- 
land; freedom  of  judgment,  conscience,  and  worship  to 
every  peaceful  citizen,  —  these  were  the  allurements  to  New 
Jersey.  To  the  proprietaries  were  reserved  a  veto  on  pro- 
vincial enactments,  the  appointment  of  judicial  officers,  and 
the  executive  authority.  Lands  were  promised  at  a  moder- 
ate quit-rent,  not  to  be  collected  till  1670.  The  Duke  of 
York,  now  president  of  the  African  company,  was  the  patron 
of  the  slave-trade  ;  the  proprietaries,  more  true  to  the  prince 
than  to  humanity,  offered  a  bounty  of  seventy-five  acres  for 
the  importation  of  each  able  emigrant,  and  the  concession 
was  interpreted  to  include  the  negro  slave.  That  the  tenure 
of  estates  might  rest  on  equity,  the  Indian  title  to  lands  was 
in  all  cases  to  be  quieted. 

The  portion  of  ISTew  Netherland  which  thus  gained  popu- 
lar freedom  was  at  that  time  almost  a  wilderness.  The  first 
occupation  of  Fort  Nassau  in  Gloucester,  and  the  grants  to 
Godyn  and  Blommaert,  above  Cape  May,  had  been  of  so  little 
avail  that,  in  1634,  not  a  single  white  man  dwelt  within  the 
Bay  of  the  Delaware.  The  pioneers  of  Sir  Edmund  Ploy- 
den  and  the  restless  emigrants  from  New  Haven  had  both 
been  unsuccessful.  Here  and  there,  in  the  counties  of  Glou- 
cester and  Burlington,  a  Swedish  farmer  may  have  preserved 
his  dwelling  on  the  Jersey  side  of  the  river ;  and,  before 
1664,  perhaps  three  Dutch  families  were  established  about 
Burlington  ;  but  as  yet  West  New  Jersey  had  not  a  hamlet. 
In  East  Jersey,  of  which  the  hills  and  the  soil  had  been 
trodden  by  the  mariners  of  Hudson,  a  trading  station  seems, 
in  1618,  to  have  been  occupied  at  Bergen.  In  December, 
1651,  Augustine  Herman  purchased,  but  hardly  took  posses- 
sion of  the  land  that  stretched  from  Newark  Bay  to  the 
west  of  Elizabethtown ;  while,  in  January,  1658,  other  pur- 
chasers obtained  the  large  grant  called  Bergen,  where  the 
early  station  became  a  permanent  settlement.  Before  the 
end  of  1664,  a  few  families  of  Quakers  appear  also  to  have 
found  a  refuge  south  of  Raritan  Bay. 

,gg3  More  than  a  year  earlier.  New  England  Puritans, 

Mar.  26.  sojoumcrs  ou  Loug  Island,  solicited  of  the  Dutch, 


1666. 


NEW  NETHEBLAND.  71 


and,  as  the  records  prove,  obtained  leave  to  establish  on  the 
banks  of  the  Raritan    and   the   Minisink    their  cherished 
institutions,  and  even  their  criminal  jurisprudence. 
Soon  after  the  surrender,  a  similar  petition  was  re-  gept^. 
newed  to  the  representative  of  the  Duke  of  York ; 
and,  as  the  parties,  heedless  of  the  former  grant  to 
Herman,  succeeded  in  obtaining  from  the  Indians  a  Oct.  28. 
deed  of  an  extensive  territory  on  Newark  Bay,  NicoUs, 
ignorant  as  yet  of  the  sale  of  New  Jersey,  and  having 
already  granted  land  on  Hackensack  Neck,  encour-     Oct.  3. 
aged  emigration   by  ratifying  the  sale.      The   tract    Dec.  2. 
afterwards   became   known   as   "  the   Elizabethtown 
purchase,"  and  led  to  abundant  litigation.     In  April, 
1665,  a  further   patent  was  issued,  under  the  same  ^p^fg. 
authority,  to  William  Goulding  and  others,  for  the 
region  extending  from  Sandy  Hook  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Raritan.     For  a  few  months.  East  New  Jersey  bore 
the  name  of  Albania.     Nicolls  could  boast  that  "  on       Nov. 
the  new  purchases  from  the  Indians  three  towns  were 
beginning ; "  and,  under  grants  from  the  Dutch  and  from 
the  governor  of  New  York,  the  coast  from  the  old  settlement 
of  Bergen  to  Sandy  Hook,  along  Newark  Bay,  at  Middle- 
town,  at  Shrewsbury,  was  enlivened  by  humble  plantations, 
that  were  soon  to  constitute  a  semicircle  of  villages. 

In  August,  1665,  Philip  Carteret  appeared  among  the 
tenants  of  the  scattered  cabins,  and  was  quietly  received  as 
the  governor  appointed  for  the  colony  by  the  proprietaries. 
In  vain  did  Nicolls  protest  against  the  division  of  his  prov- 
ince, and  struggle  to  secure  for  his  patron  the  territory 
which  had  been  released  in  ignorance.  The  incipient  peo- 
ple had  no  motive  to  second  his  complaints  ;  the  freedom  of 
New  Jersey  assured  its  separate  existence.  Yet  so  feeble 
were  the  beginnings  of  the  commonwealth,  it  was  but  a 
cluster  of  four  houses,  which,  in  honor  of  the  kind-hearted 
Lady  Carteret,  was  now  called  Elizabethtown,  and  rose  into 
dignity  as  the  capital  of  the  province. 

To  New  England,  messengers  were  despatched  to  publish 
the  tidings  that  Puritan  liberties  were  warranted  a 
shelter  on  the  Raritan.     Immediately  an  association       leee. 


72 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXII. 


of   church   members   from   the   New  Haven   colony  sailed 

into    the    Passaic,    and,    at   the   request   of   the   governor, 

holding  a  council  with  .the  Hackensack  tribe,  thera- 

May  21.  sclves   extinguished    the    Indian   title    to    Newark. 

"  With   one  heart,  they  resolved   to  carry  on  their 

spiritual  and  town  affairs  according  to  godly  govern- 

1667.       ment ; "  to  be  ruled  under  their  old  laws  by  officers 

1668.     chosen  from  among  themselves ;  and  when,  in  May, 

May  26.   1668,  a  colonial  legislative  assembly  was  for  the  first 

time  convened  at  Elizabethtown,  the  influence  of  Puritans 

transferred  the  chief  features  of  the  New  England  codes  to 

the  statute-book  of  New  Jersey. 

The  province  increased  in  numbers  and  prosperity.     The 
land  was  accessible  and  productive ;  the  temperate  climate 
delighted  by  its  salubrity ;  there  was  little  danger  from  the 
neighboring  Indians,  whose  strength  had  been  broken  by 
long  hostilities  with  the  Dutch ;  the  Five  Nations  guarded 
the  approaches  from  the  interior ;  and  the  vicinity  of  older 
settlements    saved    the  emigrants  from  the   distresses  of  a 
first  adventure  in  the  wilderness.     Every  thing  was 
Mar!'"25.  ^^  good  augury,  till,  in  1670,  the  quit-rents  of  a  half- 
penny an  acre  were  seriously  spoken  of.     But,  on  the 
subject  of  real  estate  in  the  New  World,  the  Puritans  dif- 
fered from  the  lawyers  widely,  asserthig  that  the  heathen, 
as  a  part  of  the  lineal  descendants  of  Noah,  had  a  rightful 
claim  to  their  lands.     The  Indian   deeds,  executed  partly 
with  the  approbation  of  Nicolls,  partly  with  the  consent  of 
Carteret  himself,  were  therefore  pleaded  as  superior  to  pro- 
prietary grants  ;    the  payment  of  quit-rents  was  refused  ; 
disputes  were  followed  by  confusion  ;  and,  in  May, 
lily^k.  1672,  the  disaffected  colonists,  obeying  the  impulse 
of  independence  rather  than  of  gratitude,  sent  dep- 
uties to  a  constituent  assembly  at  Elizabethtown.     By  that 
body  Philip  Carteret  was  displaced,  and  his  office  transferred 
to  the  young  and  frivolous  James  Carteret,  a  natural  son  of 
Sir  George.     The  proprietary  officers  could  make  no 
June  15.  resistance.     William  Pardon,  who  withheld  the  rec- 
ords,  found   safety  only   in  flight.      Following   the 
juiyi.    advice  of  the  council,  after  appointing  John  Berry 


1665.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  T3 

as  his  deputy,  Philip  Carteret  repaired  to  England,  in  search 
of  new  authority,  while  the  colonists  remained  in  the  undis- 
turbed possession  of  their  farms. 

The  liberties  of  New  Jersey  did  not  extend  beyond  1664  to 
the  Delaware  ;  the  settlements  in  New  Netherland,  ^^^^ 
on  the  opposite  bank,  consisting  chiefly  of  groups  of  Dutch 
round  Lewistown  and  Newcastle,  and  Swedes  and  Finns  at 
Christiana  Creek,  at  Chester,  and  near  Philadelphia,  were 
retained  as  a  dependency  of  New  York.  The  claim  of  Lord 
Baltimore  was.  denied  with  pertinacity.  In  1672,  the  people 
of  Maryland,  desiring  to  stretch  the  boundary  of  their  prov- 
ince to  the  bay,  invaded  Lewistown  with  an  armed  force. 
The  country  was  immediately  reclaimed,  as  belonging  by 
conquest  to  the  Duke  of  York ;  and  Delaware  still  escaped 
the  imminent  peril  of  being  absorbed  in  Maryland. 

In  respect  to  civil  liberties,  the  territory  shared  the       1664. 
fortunes  of  New  York ;  and  for  that  province  the 
establishment  of  English  jurisdiction  was  not  followed  by 
the  hoped  for  concessions.     Connecticut,  surrender- 
ing all  claims  to  Long  Island,  obtained  a  favorable    Dec.  1. 
boundary  on  the  main.     The  city  of  New  York  was 
incorporated  ;  the  municipal  liberties  of  Albany  were  not 
impaired ;  but  the  province  had  no  political  franchises,  and 
therefore  no  political  unity.     In  the  governor  and  his  sub- 
servient council  were  vested  the  executive  and  the 
highest  judicial  powers ;  with  the  court  of  assizes,    ^xeJj*^ 
composed  of  justices  of  his  own  appointment,  holding 
oflice  at  his  will,  he  exercised  supreme  legislative  power, 
promulgated  a  code  of  laws,  and  modified  or  repealed  them 
at  pleasure.    No  popular  representation,  no  true  English  lib- 
erty, was  sanctioned.     Once,  indeed,  and  only  once, 
a  convention  was  held  at  Hempstead,  chiefly  for  the    jyJarcii. 
purpose  of  settling  the  respective  limits  of  the  towns 
on   Long  Island.     The  rate  for  public  charges  was  there 
perhaps  agreed   upon ;    and  the  deputies  were  induced  to 
sign  an  extravagantly  loyal  address  to  the  Duke  of  York. 
But  "  factious  republicans "  abounded  ;  the  deputies  were 
scorned  by  their   constituents  for  their  inconsiderate   ser- 
vility ;   and    the   governor,   who   never   again   allowed   an 


T4  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 

1666.  assembly,  was  "  reproached  and  vilified  "  for  his  arbi- 
trary conduct.      Even  the   Dutch   patents  for   land 

were  held  to  require  renewal,  and  Nicolls  gathered  a  har- 
vest of  fees  from  exacting  new  title-deeds. 

1667.  Under  Lovelace,  his  successor,  the  same  system  was 
^*^'      more  fully  developed.    Even  on  the  southern  shore  of 
1669.       the  Delaware,  the  Swedes  and  Finns,  the  most  endur- 
ing of  all  emigrants,  were  roused  to  resistance.    "  The 

method  for  keeping  the  people  in  order  is  severity,  and 
laying  such  taxes  as  may  give  them  liberty  for  no  thought 
but  how  to  discharge  them."  Such  was  the  remedy 
Oct.  18.  proposed  in  the  instructions  from  Lovelace  to  his 
southern  subordinate,  and  carried  into  effect  by  an 
arbitrary  tariff. 

In  New  York,  when  the  established  powers  of  the  towns 
favored  the  demand  for  freedom,  eight  villages  soon 
Oct.  9.     united  in  remonstrating  against  the  arbitrary  govern- 
ment ;  they  demanded  the  promised  legislation  by  an- 
nual assemblies.     But  absolute  government  was  the  settled 
policy  of  the  royal  proprietary ;  and  taxation  for  purposes 
of  defence,  by  the  decree  of  the  governor,  was  the 
Odl^s.     ^^^^  experiment.      The  towns  of    Southold,  South- 
ampton, and  Easthampton,  expressed  themselves  will- 
ing to  contribute,  if  they  might  enjoy  the  privileges  of  the 
New  England  colonies.     The  people  of  Huntington  refused 
altogether ;  for,  said  they,  "  we  are  deprived  of  the  liberties 
of  Englishmen."     The.  people  of  Jamaica  declared  the  de- 
cree of  the  governor  a   disfranchisement,   contrary  to  the 
laws  of  the  English  nation.     Flushing  and  Hempstead  were 
equally  resolute.      The  votes   of   the   several   towns  were 
presented  to  the  governor  and  council ;    they  were 
Dec.  21.  censured  as  "  scandalous,  illegal,  and  seditious,  alien- 
ating the  peaceable  from  their  duty  and  obedience," 
and,  according  to  the  established   precedents  of   tyranny, 
were  ordered  to  be  publicly  burnt  before  the  town-house  of 
New  York. 

It  was  easy  to  burn  the  votes  which  the  yeomanry  of 
Long  Island  had  passed  in  their  town-meetings.  But,  mean- 
time, the  forts  were  not  put  in   order ;  the  government  of 


1673.  NEW  NETHERLAND. 


75 


the  Duke  of  York  was  hated  as  despotic ;  and  when,  in  the 
next  war  between  England  and  the  Netherlands,  a 
small  Dutch  squadron,  commanded  by  the  gallant  ju?J^3o. 
Evertsen  of  Zealand,  approached  Manhattan,  the  city 
surrendered  within  four  hours  ;  the  people  of  New  Jersey 
made  no  resistance ;  and  the  counties  on  the  Delaware,  recov- 
ering greater  privileges  than  they  had  enjoyed,  cheerfully 
followed  the  example.  The  quiet  of  the  neighboring  colonies 
was  secured  by  a  compromise  for  Long  Island  and  a  timely 
message  from  Massachusetts.  The  Mohawk  chiefs  congrat- 
ulated their  brethren  on  the  recovery  of  their  colony.  "  We 
have  always,"  said  they,  "been  as  one  flesh.  If  the  French 
come  down  from  Canada,  we  will  join  with  the  Dutch  na- 
tion, and  live  and  die  with  them ;  "  and  the  words  of 
love  were  confirmed  by  a  belt  of  wampum.  New  ll]l[ 
York  was  once  more  a  province  of  the  Netherlands. 

The  moment  at  which  Holland  and  Zealand  retired  for 
a  time  from  American  history,  like  the  moment  of  their 
entrance,  was  a  season  of  glory.  The  nation  of  merchants 
and  manufacturers  had  just  achieved  its  independence  of 
Spain,  and  given  to  the  Protestant  world  a  brilliant  example 
of  a  federal  republic,  when  its  mariners  took  possession  of 
the  Hudson.  The  country  was  now  reconquered,  at  a  time 
when  the  provinces,  single-handed,  were  again  struggling  for 
existence  against  yet  more  powerful  antagonists.  France, 
supported  by  the  bishops  of  Munster  and  Cologne,  had  suc- 
ceeded in  involving  England  in  a  conspiracy  for  the  politi- 
cal destruction  of  England's  commercial  rival.  Charles  II. 
had  begun  hostilities  as  a  pirate  ;  and  Louis  XIV.  did  not 
disguise  the  purpose  of  conquest.  With  armies  amounting 
to  two  hundred  thousand  men,  to  which  the  Netherlands 
could  oppose  no  more  than  twenty  thousand,  the  French 
monarch  invaded  the  republic ;  and,  within  a  month, 
it  was  exposed  to  the  same  desperate  dangers  which  1673. 
had  been  encountered  a  century  before ;  while  the 
English  fleet,  hovering  off  the  coast,  endeavored  to  land 
English  troops  in  the  heart  of  the  wealthiest  of  the  prov- 
inces. Ruin  was  imminent,  and  had  come  but  for  the  pub- 
lic virtue.     The  annals  of  the  human  race  record  but  few 


Of  THE 


76  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIL 

instances  where  moral  power  has  so  successfully  defied 
every  disparity  of  force,  and  repelled  desperate  odds  by 
invincible  heroism.  At  sea,  where  greatly  superior  numbers 
were  on  the  side  of  the  allied  fleets  of  France  and  England, 
the  untiring  courage  of  the  Dutch  would  not  consent  to  be 
defeated.  On  land,  the  dikes  were  broken  up  ;  the  country 
drowned ;  the  son  of  Grotius,  suppressing  anger  at  the 
ignominious  proposals  of  the  French,  protracted  the  nego- 
tiations till  the  rising  waters  could  form  a  wide  and  impas- 
sable moat  round  the  cities.  Was  an  invasion  still  feared 
from  the  east  ?  At  Groningen,  the  whole  population,  with- 
out regard  to  sex,  children  even,  labored  on  the  fortifi- 
cations; and  fear  was  not  permitted  even  to  a  woman. 
"Would  William  of  Orange  sustain  the  crisis  with  calm  in- 
trepidity ?  Arlington,  one  of  the  joint  proprietaries  of 
Virginia,  advised  him  to  seek  advancement  by  yielding  to 
England.  "  My  country,"  calmly  replied  the  young  man, 
"  trusts  in  me  ;  I  will  not  sacrifice  it  to  my  interests,  but, 
if  need  be,  die  with  it  in  the  last  ditch."  The  landing  of 
British  troops  in  Holland  could  be  prevented  only  by  three 
naval  engagements.  De  Ruyter  and  the  younger  Tromp 
had  been  bitter  enemies ;  the  latter  had  been  disgraced  on 

the  accusation  of  the  former;  political  animosities 
jm/eV.   ^^^  increased  the  feud.     At  the  battle  of  Soulsbay, 

where  the  Dutch  with  fifty-two  ships  of  the  line  en- 
gaged an  enemy  with  eighty,  De  Ruyter  was  successful  in  his 
first  manoeuvres,  while  the  extraordinary  ardor  of  Tromp 
plunged  headlong  into  dangers  which  he  could  not  over- 
come ;  the  frank  and  true-hearted  De  Ruyter  checked  him- 
self in  the  career  of  victory,  and  turned  to  the  relief  of 
his  rival.  "Oh,  there  comes  grandfather  to  the  rescue," 
shouted  Tromp,  in  an  ecstasy ;  "  I  never  will  desert  him  so 

long  as  I  breathe."  The  issue  of  the  day  was  uncer- 
june  14.  tain.     In  the  second  battle,  the  advantage  was  with 

the  Dutch.     About  three  weeks  after  the  conquest  of 

New  Netherland,  the  last  and  most  terrible  conflict 
Aug. 21.  took  place  near  the  Helder.     The  enthusiasm  of  the 

Dutch  mariners  dared  almost  infinite  deeds  of  valor  ; 
the  noise  of  the  artillery  boomed  along  the  low  coast  of 


1674.  NEW  NETHERLAND.  77 

Holland ;  the  churches  on  the  shore  were  thronged  with 
suppliants,  begging  victory  for  the  right  cause  and  their 
country.  The  contest  raged,  and  was  exhausted,  and  was 
again  renewed  with  unexampled  fury.  But  victory  was 
with  De  Ruyter  and  the  younger  Tromp,  the  guardians  of 
their  country.  The  British  fleet  retreated,  and  was  pur- 
sued ;  the  coasts  of  Holland  were  protected. 

For  more  than  a  century,  no  other  naval  combat  was 
fought  between  Netherlands  and  England.  The  English 
parliament,  condemning  the  war,  refused  supplies ;  Prussia 
and  Austria  were  alarmed  ;  Spain  openly  threatened,  and 
Charles  II.  consented  to  treaties.  All  conquests 
were  to  be  restored  ;  and  Holland,  which  had  been  1674. 
the  first  to  claim  the  enfranchisement  of  the  oceans, 
against  its  present  interests,  established  by  compact  the 
rights  of  neutral  flao:s.  In  a  work  dedicated  to  all  the 
princes  and  nations  of  Christendom,  and  addressed  to 
the  common  intelligence  of  the  civilized  world,  the  ad- 
mirable Grotius,  contending  that  right  and  wrong  are  not 
the  evanescent  expressions  of  fluctuating  opinions,  but  are 
endowed  with  an  immortality  of  their  own,  had  established 
the  freedom  of  the  seas  on  an  imperishable  foundation. 
Ideas  once  generated  live  for  ever.  With  the  recognition 
of  maritime  liberty,  Holland  disappears  from  our  history ; 
when,  after  the  lapse  of  more  than  a  century,  this  principle 
comes  in  jeopardy,  Holland,  the  mother  of  four  of  our 
states,  will  rise  up  as  our  ally,  bequeathing  to  the  new  fed- 
eral republic  the  defence  of  commercial  freedom  which  she 
had  vindicated  against  Spain,  and  for  which  we  shall  see 
her  prosperity  fall  a  victim  to  England. 

On  the  final  transfer  of  New  Netherland  to  England,  Oct.  3i. 
after  a  military  occupation  of  fifteen  months  by  the 
Dutch,  the  brother  of  Charles  II.  resumed  the  possession  of 
New  York,  and  Carteret  appeared  once  more  as  proprietary 
of  the  eastern  moiety  of  New  Jersey ;  but  the  banks  of  the 
Delaware  were  reserved  for  men  who  had  been  taught  by 
the  uneducated  son  of  a  poor  Leicestershire  weaver  to  seek 
the  principle  of  God  in  their  own  hearts,  and  to  build  the 
city  of  humanity  by  obeying  the  nobler  instincts  of  human 
nature. 


78  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXHL 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

THE  PEOPLE  CALLED  QUAKERS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

The  nobler  instincts  of  humanity  are  the  same  in  every 
age  and  in  every  breast.  The  exalted  hopes  that  have 
dignified  former  generations  of  men  will  be  renewed  as 
long  as  the  human  heart  shall  throb.  The  visions  of  Plato 
are  but  revived  in  the  dreams  of  Sir  Thomas  More.  A 
spiritual  unity  binds  together  all  members  of  the  human 
family;  and  every  heart  contains  an  incorruptible  seed, 
capable  of  springing  up  and  producing  all  that  man  can 
know  of  God  and  duty  and  the  soul.  An  inward  voice, 
uncreated  by  schools,  independent  of  refinement,  opens  to 
the  unlettered  hind,  not  less  than  to  the  polished  scholar,  a 
€ure  pathway  to  immortal  truth. 

This  is  the  faith  of  the  people  called  Quakers.  A  moral 
principle  is  tested  by  the  attempt  to  reduce  it  to  practice. 

The  history  of  European  civilization  is  the  history  of  the 
gradual  enfranchisement  of  classes  of  society.  The  feudal 
sovereign  was  limited  by  the  power  of  the  military  chief- 
tains, whose  valor  achieved  his  conquests.  The  vast  and 
increasing  importance  of  commercial  transactions  gave  new 
value  to  the  municipal  privileges,  of  which  the  Roman  em- 
pire had  bequeathed  the  precedents;  while  the  intricate 
questions  that  were  perpetually  arising  for  adjudication 
crowded  the  ignorant  military  magistrate  from  the  bench, 
and  reserved  the  wearisome  toil  of  deliberation  for  the 
learning  of  his  clerk.  The  emancipation  of  the  country 
people  followed.  In  every  European  code,  the  ages  of 
feudal  influence,  of  mercantile  ambition,  of  the  enfranchise- 
ment of  the  yeomanry,  appear  distinctly  in  succession. 

It  is  the  peculiar  glory  of  England,  that  her  history  is 
marked  by  an   original,  constant,  and  increasing  political 


Chap.  XXIH.   THE  QUAKERS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.       79 

activity  of  the  people.  In  the  fourteenth  century,  the 
peasantry,  conducted  by  tilers  and  carters  and  ploughmen, 
demanded  of  their  young  king  a  deliverance  from  the 
bondage  and  burdens  of  feudal  oppression ;  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  the  last  traces  of  villeinage  were  wiped  away ;  in 
the  sixteenth,  the  noblest  ideas  of  human  destiny,  awaken- 
ing in  the  common  mind,  became  the  central  points  round 
which  plebeian  sects  were  gathered ;  in  the  seventeenth, 
the  yeomanry  and  owners  of  small  freeholds  began  to  feel 
an  instinct  for  dominion,  and  their  ambition  would  not  rest 
till  it  had  attempted  a  democratic  revolution.  The  best 
soldiers  of  the  Long  Parliament  were  country  people ;  the 
men  that  turned  the  battle  on  Marston  Moor  were  farmers 
and  farmers'  sons,  fighting,  as  they  believed,  for  their  own 
cause.  The  progress  from  the  rout  of  Wat  Tyler  to  the 
victories  of  Naseby  and  Worcester  and  Dunbar  was  made 
in  less  than  three  centuries.  So  rapid  was  the  diffusion  of 
ideas  of  freedom,  so  palpable  was  the  advancement  of 
popular  intelligence,  energy,  and  happiness,  that  to  whole 
classes  of  enthusiasts  the  day  of  perfect  enfranchisement 
seemed  to  have  dawned ;  legislation,  ceasing  to  be  partial, 
was  to  be  reformed  and  renewed  on  general  principles,  and 
the  reign  of  justice  and  reason  was  about  to  begin.  In  the 
language  of  that  age,  Christ's  kingdom  on  earth,  his  second 
coming,  was  at  hand.  Under  the  excitement  of  hope, 
created  by  the  rapid  progress  of  liberty,  which,  to  the 
common  mind,  was  an  inexplicable  mystery,  the  blissful 
centuries  of  the  millennium  promised  to  open  upon  a 
favored  world. 

Political  liberties  had  been  followed  by  the  emancipation 
of  knowledge.  The  powers  of  nature  were  freely  examined ; 
the  merchants  always  tolerated  or  favored  the  pursuits  of 
science.  Galileo  would  have  been  safe  at  Venice,  and 
honored  at  Amsterdam  or  London.  The  method  of  free 
inquiry,  applied  to  chemistry,  had  invented  gunpowder,  and 
changed  the  manners  of  the  feudal  aristocracy ;  applied  to 
geography,  had  discovered  a  hemisphere,  and,  circumnavi- 
gating the  globe,  made  the  theatre  of  commerce  wide  as  the 
world;  applied  to  the  mechanical  process  of  multiplying 


80  '  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIIL 

books,  had  brought  the  New  Testament,  in  the  vulgar 
tongue,  within  the  reach  of  every  class  ;  applied  to  the 
rights  of  persons  and  property,  had,  for  the  English,  built 
up  a  system  of  common  law,  and  given  securities  to  liberty 
in  the  interpretation  of  contracts.  The  inductive  method, 
in  its  freedom,  was  about  to  investigate  the  laws  of  the  out- 
ward world,  and  reveal  the  wonders  of  divine  Providence 
as  displayed  in  the  visible  universe. 

On  the  continent  of  Europe,  Descartes  had  already 
applied  the  method  of  observation  and  free  inquiry 
to  the  study  of  morals  and  the  mind ;  in  England,  Bacon 
hardly  proceeded  beyond  the  province  of  natural  philosophy. 
He  compared  the  subtile  visions,  in  which  the  contemplative 
soul  indulges,  to  the  spider's  web,  and  sneered  at  them  as 
frivolous  and  empty ;  but  the  spider's  web  is  essential  to  the 
spider's  well-being,  and,  for  his  neglect  of  the  inner  voice, 
Bacon  paid  the  terrible  penalty  of  a  life  disgraced  by  flattery, 
selfishness,  and  mean  compliance.  Freedom,  as  applied  to 
morals,  was  cherished  in  England  among  the  people,  and 
therefore  had  its  development  in  religion.  If  the  hierarchy 
abandoned  the  cause  of  the  people,  that  cause  always  found 
advocates  in  the  inferior  clergy  ;  and  Wycliffe  did  not  fear 
to  deny  dominion  to  vice  and  to  claim  it  for  justice.  At  the 
Reformation,  the  inferior  clergy,  rising  against  Rome  and 
against  domestic  tyranny,  had  a  common  faith  and  common 
political  cause  with  the  people.  A  body  of  the  yeomanry, 
becoming  Independents,  planted  Plymouth  colony.  The 
inferior  gentry  espoused  Calvinism,  and  fled  to  Massachu- 
setts. The  popular  movement  of  intellectual  liberty  is 
measured  by  advances  towards  the  liberty  of  prophesying 
and  the  liberty  of  conscience. 

The  moment  was  arrived  for  the  plebeian  mind  to  make 
its  boldest  effort  at  escape  from  hereditary  prejudices ; 
when  the  freedom  of  Bacon,  the  enthusiasm  of  Wycliffe, 
and  the  politics  of  Wat  Tyler,  were  to  gain  the  highest 
unity  in  a  sect ;  when  a  popular,  and  therefore,  in  that  age, 
a  religious  party,  building  upon  a  divine  principle,  should 
demand  freedom  of  mind,  purity  of  morals,  and  universal 
enfranchisement. 


1644.         THE  QUAKERS  IN  THE   UNITED   STATES.  81 

The  sect  had  its  birth  in  a  period  of  intense  public  activ- 
ity, when  the  heart  of  England  was  swelling  with  passions, 
and  the  public  mind  turbulent  with  factious  leaders  ;  when 
zeal  for  reform  was  invading  the  church,  subverting  the 
throne,  and  repealing  the  privileges  of  feudalism ;  when 
Presbyterians  in  every  village  were  quarrelling  with  Ana- 
baptists and  Independents,  and  all  with  the  Roman  Catho- 
lics and  the  English  church. 

The  sect  could  arise  only  among  the  common  people, 
who  had  every  thing  to  gain  by  its  success,  and  the  least  to 
hazard  by  its  failure.  The  privileged  classes  had  no  motive 
to  develop  a  principle  before  which  their  privileges  would 
crumble.  "  Poor  mechanics,"  said  William  Penn,  "  are  wont 
to  be  God's  great  ambassadors  to  mankind."  "  He  hath 
raised  up  a  few  despicable  and  illiterate  men,"  wrote  the 
accomplished  Barclay,  "  to  dispense  the  more  full  glad  tid- 
ings reserved  for  our  age."  It  w^as  the  comfort  of  the 
Quakers,  that  they  received  the  truth  from  a  simple  sort  of 
people,  unmixed  with  the  learning  of  schools  ;  and,  almost 
for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  world,  a  plebeian  sect 
proceeded  to  the  complete  enfranchisement  of  mind,  teach- 
ing the  English  yeomanry  the  same  method  of  free  inquiry 
which  Socrates  had  explained  to  the  young  men  of  Athens. 

The  simplicity  of  truth  was  restored  by  humble  instru- 
ments, and  its  first  messenger  was  of  low  degree.  George 
Fox,  the  son  of  "righteous  Christopher,"  a  Leicestershire 
weaver,  by  his  mother  descended  from  the  stock  of  the  mar- 
tyrs, distinguished  even  in  boyhood  by  frank  inflexibility  and 
deep  religious  feeling,  became  in  early  life  an  apprentice  to 
a  Nottingham  shoemaker,  who  was  also  a  landholder,  and, 
like  David,  and  Tamerlane,  and  Sixtus  V.,  was  set  by  his 
employer  to  watch  sheep.  The  occupation  was  grateful  to 
his  mind,  for  its  freedom,  innocency,  and  solitude;  and  the 
years  of  earliest  youth  passed  away  in  prayer  and 
reading  the  Bible,  frequent  fasts,  and  the  reveries  of  i644. 
contemplative  devotion.  His  boyish  spirit  yearned 
after  excellence ;  and  he  was  haunted  by  a  vague  desire  of  an 
unknown,  illimitable  good.  In  the  most  stormy  period  of 
the  English  democratic  revolution,  just  as  the  Independents 

VOL.  II.  6 


82  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIH. 

were  beginning  to  make  head  successfully  against  the  Pres- 
byterians, when  the  impending  ruin  of  royalty  and  the 
hierarchy  made  republicanism  the  doctrine  of  a  party,  and 
inspiration  the  faith  of  fanatics,  the  mind  of  Fox,  as  it  re- 
volved the  question  of  human  destiny,  was  agitated  even 
to  despair.  The  melancholy  natural  to  youth  heightened 
his  anguish ;  abandoning  his  flocks  and  his  shoemaker's 
bench,  he  nourished  his  inexplicable  grief  by  retired  medita- 
tions, and,  often  walking  solitary  in  the  chase,  sought  for  a 
vision  of  God. 

He  questioned  his  life ;  but  his  blameless  life  was  igno- 
rant of  remorse.  He  went  to  many  "  priests  "  for  comfort, 
but  found  no  comfort  from  them.  His  Avretchedness  urged 
him  to  visit  London ;  and  there  the  religious  feuds  con- 
vinced him  that  the  great  professors  were  dark.  He  re- 
turned to  the  country,  where  some  advised  him  to  marry, 
others  to  join  Cromwell's  army ;  but  his  excited  mind  con- 
tinued its  conflicts ;  and,  as  it  has  happened  to  young  men 
from  love,  his  restless  spirit  drove  him  into  the  fields,  where 
he  walked  many  nights  long  by  himself,  in  misery  too  great 
to  be  declared.  Yet  at  times  a  ray  of  heavenly  joy  beamed 
upon  his  soul,  and  he  reposed,  as  it  were,  serenely  on  Abra- 
ham's bosom. 

He  had  been  bred  in  the  church  of  Engrland.     One 

1646. 

day,  the  thought  rose  in  his  mind  that  a  man  might 
be  bred  at  Oxford  or  Cambridge,  and  yet  be  unable  to  ex- 
plain the  great  problem  of  existence.  Again  he  reflected 
that  God  lives  not  in  temples  of  brick  and  stone,  but  in  the 
hearts  of  the  living ;  and  from  the  parish  priest  and  the 
parish  church  he  turned  to  the  dissenters.  But  among 
them  he  found  the  most  experienced  unable  to  reach  his 
condition. 

Neither  could  the  pursuit   of  wealth   detain   his 

mind  from  its  struggle  for  fixed  truth.  His  desires 
were  those  which  wealth  could  not  satisfy.  A  king's  diet, 
palace,  and  attendance,  had  been  to  him  as  nothing.  Re- 
jecting "the  changeable  ways  of  religious"  sects,  the  "brit- 
tle notions  "  and  airy  theories  of  philosophy,  he  longed  for 
"  unchangeable  truth,"  a  firm  foundation  of  morals  in  the 


1648.         THE   QUAKERS  IN   THE   UNITED   STATES.  83 

soul.  His  inquiring  mind  was  gently  led  along  to  principles 
of  endless  and  eternal  love,  till  light  dawned  within  him ; 
and,  though  the  world  was  rocked  by  tempests  of  opinion, 
his  secret  and  as  yet  unconscious  belief  was  stayed  by  the 
anchor  of  hope. 

The  strong  mind  of  George  Fox  had  already  risen  above 
the  prejudices  of  sects.  The  greatest  danger  remained. 
Liberty  may  be  pushed  to  dissoluteness,  and  freedom  is  the 
fork  in  the  road  where  the  by-way  leads  to  infidelity. 
One  morning,  as  Fox  sat  silently  by  the  fire,  a  cloud  1648. 
came  over  his  mind  ;  a  baser  instinct  seemed  to  say  : 
"  All  things  come  by  nature ; "  and  the  elements  and  the 
stars  oppressed  his  imagination  with  a  vision  of  pantheism. 
But,  as  he  continued  musing,  a  true  voice  arose  within  him, 
and  said  :  "  There  is  a  living  God."  At  once  the  clouds  of 
skepticism  rolled  away ;  mind  triumphed  over  matter,  and 
the  depths  of  conscience  were  irradiated  and  cheered  by 
light  from  heaven.  His  soul  enjoyed  the  sweetness  of 
repose,  and  he  came  up  in  spirit  from  the  agony  of  doubt 
into  the  paradise  of  contemplation. 

Having  listened  to  the  revelation  which  had  been  made 
to  his  soul,  he  thirsted  for  a  reform  in  every  branch  of  learn- 
ing. The  physician  should  quit  the  strife  of  words,  and 
solve  the  appearances  of  nature  by  an  intimate  study  of  the 
higher  laws  of  being.  The  priests,  rejecting  authority  and 
giving  up  the  trade  in  knowledge,  should  seek  oracles  of 
truth  in  the  purity  of  conscience.  The  lawyers,  abandoning 
their  chicanery,  should  tell  their  clients  plainly  that  he  who 
wrongs  his  neighbor  does  a  wrong  to  himself.  The  heav- 
enly-minded man  was  become  a  divine  and  a  naturalist,  and 
all  of  God  Almighty's  making. 

Thus  did  the  mind  of  George  Fox  arrive  at  the  conclu- 
sion that  truth  is  to  be  sought  by  listening  to  the  voice  of 
God  in  the  soul.  Not  the  learning  of  the  universities,  not 
the  Roman  see,  not  the  English  church,  not  dissenters,  not 
the  whole  outward  world,  can  lead  to  a  fixed  rule  of  mo- 
rality. The  law  in  the  heart  must  be  received  without 
prejudice,  cherished  without  mixture,  and  obeyed  without 
fear. 


84 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXni. 


Such  was  the  spontaneous  wisdom  by  which  he  was 
guided.  It  was  the  clear  light  of  reason,  dawning  as 
\^l'  through  a  cloud.  CJonfident  that  his  name  was  written 
in  the  Lamb's  book  of  life,  he  was  borne,  by  an  irre- 
pressible impulse,  to  go  forth  into  the  briery  and  brambly 
world,  and  publish  the  glorious  principles  which  had  rescued 
him  from  despair  and  infidelity,  and  given  him  a  clear  per- 
ception of  the  immutable  distinctions  between  right  and 
wrong.  At  the  very  crisis  when  the  house  of  commons  was 
abolishing  monarchy  and  the  peerage,  about  two  years  and  a 
half  from  the  day  when  Cromwell  went  on  his  knees  to  kiss 
the  hand  of  the  young  boy  who  was  Duke  of  York,  the  Lord, 
who  sent  George  Fox  into  the  world,  forbade  him  to  put  off 
his  hat  to  any,  high  or  low ;  and  he  was  required  to  thee  and 
thou  all  men  and  women,  without  any  respect  to  rich  or 
poor,  to  great  or  small.  The  sound  of  the  church  bell  in 
Nottingham,  the  home  of  his  boyhood,  struck  to  his  heart ; 
like  Milton  and  Roger  Williams,  his  soul  abhorred  the 
hireling  ministry  of  diviners  for  money ;  and,  on  the  morn- 
ing of  a  first-day,  he  was  moved  to  go  to  the  great  steeple- 
house  and  cry  against  the  idol.  "  When  I  came  there," 
says  Fox,  "  the  people  looked  like  fallow  ground,  and  the 
priest,  like  a  great  lump  of  earth,  stood  in  the  pulpit  above. 
He  took  for  his  text  these  words  of  Peter :  '  We  have  also 
a  more  sure  word  of  prophecy ; '  and  told  the  people  this 
was  the  Scriptures.  Now,  the  Lord's  power  was  so  mighty 
upon  me,  and  so  strong  in  me,  that  I  could  not  hold ;  but 
was  made  to  cry  out :  *  Oh,  no !  it  is  not  the  Scriptures,  it  is 
the  Spirit.'" 

The  principle  contained  a  moral  revolution.  If  it  flattered 
self-love  and  fed  enthusiasm,  it  also  established  absolute 
freedom  of  mind,  trod  every  idolatry  under  foot,  and  en- 
tered the  strongest  protest  against  the  forms  of  a  hierarchy. 
It  was  the  principle  for  which  Socrates  died  and  Plato  suf- 
fered ;  and,  now  that  Fox  went  forth  to  proclaim  it  among 
the  people,  he  was  everywhere  resisted  with  angry  vehe- 
mence, and  priests  and  professors,  magistrates  and  people, 
swelled  like  the  raging  waves  of  the  sea.  At  the  Lancaster 
sessions,  forty  priests  appeared  against  him  at  once.    To  the 


Chap.  XXIII.  THE  QUAKERS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.       85 

ambitious  Presbyterians,  it  seemed  as  if  hell  were  broke 
loose ;  and  Fox,  imprisoned  and  threatened  with  the  gallows, 
still  rebuked  their  bitterness  as  "  exceeding  rude  and  devil- 
ish," resisting  and  overcoming  pride  with  unbending  stub- 
bornness. Possessed  of  great  ideas  which  he  could  not  trace 
to  their  origin,  a  mystery  to  himself,  like  Cromwell  and  so 
many  others  who  have  exercised  vast  influence  on  society, 
he  believed  himself  the  special  ward  of  a  favoring  Provi- 
dence, and  his  doctrine  the  spontaneous  expression  of 
irresistible,  intuitive  trxith.  Nothing  could  daunt  his  en- 
thusiasm. Cast  into  jail  among  felons,  he  claimed  of  the 
public  tribunals  a  release  only  to  continue  his  exertions ; 
and,  as  he  rode  about  the  country,  the  seed  of  God  sparkled 
about  him  like  innumerable  sparks  of  fire.  If  cruelly 
beaten,  or  set  in  the  stocks,  or  ridiculed  as  mad,  he  none 
the  less  proclaimed  the  oracles  of  the  voice  within  him,  and 
rapidly  gained  adherents  among  the  country  people.  If 
driven  from  the  church,  he  spoke  in  the  open  air;  forced 
from  the  shelter  of  the  humble  alehouse,  he  slept  without 
fear  under  a  haystack,  or  watched  among  the  furze.  His 
fame  increased ;  crowds  gathered,  like  flocks  of  pigeons,  to 
hear  him.  His  frame  in  prayer  is  described  as  the  most 
awful,  living,  and  reverent  ever  felt  or  seen;  and  his 
vigorous  understanding,  disciplined  by  clear  convictions  to 
natural  dialectics,  made  him  powerful  in  the  public  discus- 
sions to  which  he  defied  the  world.  A  true  witness,  writing 
from  knowledge  and  not  report,  declares  that,  by  night  and 
by  day,  by  sea  and  by  land,  in  every  emergency  of  the 
nearest  and  most  exercising  nature,  he  was  always  in  his 
place,  and  always  a  match  for  every  service  and  occasion. 
By  degrees  "  the  hypocrites "  feared  to  dispute  with  him ; 
and  the  simplicity  of  his  principle  found  such  ready  en- 
trance among  the  people  that  the  priests  trembled  and  scud 
as  he  drew  near;  "so  that  it  was  a  dreadful  thing  to  them, 
when  it  was  told  them :  '  The  man  in  leathern  breeches  is 
come.' " 

The  converts  to  his  doctrine  were  chiefly  among  the 
yeomanry ;  and  Quakers  were  compared  to  the  butterflies 
that  live  in  fells.     It  is  the  boast  of  Barclay  that  the  sim- 


86  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIII. 

plicity  of  truth  was  restored  by  weak  instruments,  and 
Penn  exults  that  the  message  came  without  suspicion  of 
human  wisdom.  It  was  wonderful  to  witness  the  energy 
and  the  unity  of  mind  and  character  which  the  strong  per- 
ception of  speculative  truth  imparted  to  illiterate  mechanics  ; 
they  delivered  the  oracles  of  conscience  with  fearless  free- 
dom and  natural  eloquence ;  and,  with  happy  and  uncon- 
scious sagacity,  spontaneously  developed  the  system  of 
moi-al  truth,  which,  as  they  believed,  exists  as  an  incor- 
ruptible seed  in  every  soul. 

Every  human  being  was  embraced  within  the  sphere  of 
their  benevolence.  George  Fox  did  not  fail,  by  letter,  to 
catechise  Innocent  XI.  Ploughmen  and  milkmaids,  be- 
coming itinerant  preachers,  sounded  the  alarm  throughout 
the  world,  and  appealed  to  the  consciences  of  Puritans  and 
Cavaliers,  of  the  Pope  and  the  Grand  Turk,  of  the  negro 
and 'the  savage.  The  plans  of  the  Quakers  designed  no 
less  than  the  establishment  of  a  universal  religion ;  their 
apostles  made  their  way  to  Rome  and  Jerusalem,  to  New 
England  and  Egypt ;  and  some  were  even  moved  to  go 
towards  China  and  Japan,  and  in  search  of  the  unknown 
realms  of  Prester  John. 

The  rise  of  the  people  called  Quakers  is  one  of  the 
memorable  events  in  the  history  of  man.  It  marks  the 
moment  when  intellectual  freedom  was  claimed  uncon- 
ditionally by  the  people  as  an  inalienable  birthright.  To 
the  masses  in  that  age  all  reflection  on  politics  and  morals 
presented  itself  under  a  theological  form.  The  Quaker 
doctrine  is  philosophy,  summoned  from  the  cloister,  the 
college,  and  the  saloon,  and  planted  among  the  most  de- 
spised of  the  people. 

As  poetry  is  older  than  critics,  so  philosophy  is  older  than 
metaphysicians.  The  mysterious  question  of  the  purpose 
of  our  being  is  always  before  us  and  within  us ;  and  the 
child,  as  it  begins  to  prattle,  makes  inquiries  which  the 
pride  of  learning  cannot  solve.  The  method  of  the  solu- 
tion adopted  by  the  Quakers  was  ^he  natural  consequence 
of  the  origin  of  their  sect.  The  mind  of  George  Fox  had 
the  highest  systematic  sagacity ;  and  his  doctrine,  developed 


Chap.  XXIII.  THE  QUAKERS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.       87 

and  rendered  illustrious  by  Barclay  and  Penn,  was  distin- 
guished by  its  simplicity  and  unity.  The  Quaker  has  but 
one  word,  the  inner  light,  the  voice  of  God  in  the  soul. 
That  light  is  a  reality,  and  therefore  in  its  freedom  the 
highest  revelation  of  truth ;  it  is  kindred  with  the  Spirit  of 
God,  and  therefore  merits  dominion  as  the  guide  to  virtue ; 
it  shines  in  every  man's  breast,  and  therefore  joins  the 
whole  human  race  in  the  unity  of  equal  rights.  Intellectual 
freedom,  the  supremacy  of  mind,  universal  enfranchise- 
ment, —  these  three  points  include  the  whole  of  Quakerism, 
as  far  as  it  belongs  to  civil  history. 

Quakerism  rests  on  the  reality  of  the  Inner  Light ;  and 
its  method  of  inquiry  is  absolute  freedom  applied  to 
consciousness.  The  revelation  of  truth  is  immediate.  It 
springs  neither  from  tradition  nor  from  the  senses,  butj 
directly  from  the  mind.  No  man  comes  to  the  knowledge 
of  God  but  by  the  Spirit.  "Each  person,"  says  Penn, 
"knows  God  from  an  infallible  demonstration  in  himself, 
and  not  on  the  slender  grounds  of  men's  lo  here  interpre- 
tations, or  lo  there."  "  The  instinct  of  a  Deity  is  so  natural 
to  man  that  he  can  no  more  be  without  it,  and  be,  than  he 
can  be  without  the  most  essential  part  of  himself."  As  the 
eye  opens,  light  enters ;  and  the  mind,  as  it  looks  in  upon 
itself,  receives  moral  truth  by  intuition.  Others  have 
sought  wisdom  by  consulting  the  outward  world,  and,  con- 
founding consciousness  with  reflection,  have  trusted  solely 
to  the  senses  for  the  materials  of  thought;  the  Quaker,; 
placing  no  dependence  on  the  world  of  the  senses,  calls  the 
soul  home  from  its  wanderings  through  the  mazes  of  tradi- 
tion and  the  wonders  of  the  visible  universe,  bidding  the 
vagrant  sit  down  by  its  own  fires  to  read  the  divine  inscrip- 
tion on  the  heart.  "  Some  seek  truth  in  books,  some  in 
learned  men,  but  what  they  seek  for  is  in  themselves." 
Man  is  an  epitome  of  the  world,  and,  to  be  learned  in  it, 
we  have  only  to  read  ourselves  well." 

Thus  the  method  of  the  Quaker  coincided  with  that  of 
Descartes,  who  founded  his  system  on  consciousness,  and 
made  the  human  mind  the  point  of  departure  in  philosophy. 
But  Descartes  plunged  immediately  into  the  confusion  of 


88  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIIL 

hypothesis,  drifting  to  sea  to  be  wrecked  among  the  barren 
waves  of  ontological  speculation ;  and  even  Leibnitz,  con- 
fident in  his  genius  and  learning,  lost  his  way  among  the 
monads  of  creation  and  the  pre-established  harmonies  in 
this  best  of  all  possible  worlds ;  the  illiterate  Quaker  adhered 
strictly  to  his  method,  and  never  ventured  to  sea  except 
with  the  certain  guidance  of  the  cynosure  in  the  heart.  He 
was  consistent,  for  he  set  no  value  on  learning  acquired  in 
any  other  way.  Tradition  cannot  enjoin  a  ceremony,  still 
less  establish  a  doctrine;  historical  faith  is  as  the  old  heav- 
ens that  are  to  be  wrapped  up  like  a  scroll. 

The  constant  standard  of  truth  and  goodness,  says  Wil- 
liam Penn,  is  God  in  the  conscience ;  and  liberty  of  con- 
science is  therefore  the  most  sacred  right,  and  the  only 
avenue  to  religion.  To  restrain  it  is  an  invasion  of  the 
divine  prerogative.  It  robs  man  of  the  use  of  the  instinct 
of  a  Deity.  To  take  away  the  great  charter  of  freedom  of 
conscience  is  to  prevent  the  progress  of  society ;  or  rather, 
as  the  beneficent  course  of  Providence  cannot  be  checked, 
it  is  in  men  of  the  present  generation  but  knotting  a  whip- 
cord to  lash  their  own  posterity.  The  selfishness  of  bigotry 
is  the  same  in  every  age  ;  the  persecutors  of  to-day  do  not 
differ  from  those  who  inflamed  the  people  of  Athens  to 
demand  the  death  of  Socrates  ;  and  the  Quaker  champions 
of  freedom  of  mind  would  never  shrink  from  its  exercise, 
through  fear  of  prisons  or  martyrdom. 

But  the  Quaker  asked  for  conscience  more  than  security 
against  penal  legislation.  He  proclaimed  an  insurrection 
against  every  form  of  authority  over  conscience ;  he  resisted 
every  attempt  at  the  slavish  subjection  of  the  understand- 
ing. He  had  no  reverence  for  the  decrees  of  a  university, 
a  convocation,  or  a  synod ;  no  fear  of  maledictions  from  the 
Vatican.  Nor  was  this  all.  The  Quakfjr  denied  the  value 
of  all  learning,  except  that  which  the  mind  appropriates  by 
its  own  intelligence.  The  lessons  of  tradition  were  no  bet- 
ter than  the  prating  of  a  parrot,  and  letter  learning  may  be 
hurtful  as  well  as  helpful.  When  the  mind  is  not  free,  the 
devil  can  accompany  the  zealot  to  his  prayers  and  the 
doctor  to  his  study.     The  soul  is  a  living  fountain  of  im- 


Chap.  XXIIL  THE  QUAKERS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


89 


mortal  truth;  but  a  college  is  in  itself  no  better  than  a 
cistern,  in  which  water  may  stagnate,  and  truth  to  him  who 
is  learned  and  not  wise,  who  knows  words  and  not  things, 
is  of  no  more  worth  than  a  beautiful  piece  of  sculpture  to  a 
Vandal.  Let  then  the  pedant  plume  himself  in  the  belief 
that  erudition  is  wisdom ;  the  waters  of  life,  welling  up 
from  the  soul,  gush  forth  in  spontaneous  freedom ;  and  the 
illiterate  mechanic  need  not  fear  to  rebuke  the  proudest 
rabbis  of  the  university. 

The  Quaker  equally  claimed  the  emancipation  of  con- 
science from  the  terrors  of  superstition.  He  did  not  waken 
devotion  by  appeals  to  fear.  He  could  not  grow  pale  from 
dread  of  apparitions,  or,  like  Grotius,  establish  his  faith  by 
the  testimony  of  ghosts ;  and,  in  an  age  when  the  English 
courts  punished  witchcraft  with  death,  he  rejected  the  delu- 
sion as  having  no  warrant  in  the  free  experience  of  the  soul. 
To  him  no  spirit  was  created  evil ;  the  world  began  with 
innocency ;  and,  as  God  blessed  the  works  of  his  hands,  their 
natures  and  harmony  magnified  their  Creator.  God  made 
no  devil ;  for  all  that  he  made  was  good,  without  a  jar  in 
the  whole  frame.  Discord  proceeds  from  a  perversion  of 
powers,  whose  purpose  was  benevolent ;  and  the  spirit  be- 
comes evil  only  by  a  departure  from  truth. 

The  Quaker  was  equally  warned  against  the  delusions  of 
self-love.  His  enemies,  in  derision,  sneered  at  his  idol  as  a 
delirious  will-o'-the-wisp,  that  claimed  a  heavenly  descent 
for  the  offspring  of  earthly  passions  ;  and  Fox  and  Barclay 
and  Penn  earnestly  denounced  "  the  idolatry  which  hugs 
its  own  conceptions,"  mistaking  the  whimseys  of  a  feverish 
brain  for  the  calm  revelations  of  truth.  But  "  How  shall  I 
know,"  asks  Penn,  "that  a  man  does  not  obtrude  his  own 
sense  upon  us  as  the  infallible  Spirit  ?  "  And  he  answers, 
"  By  the  same  Spirit."  The  Spirit  witnesseth  to  our  spirit. 
The  Quaker  repudiates  the  errors  Avhich  the  bigotry  of  sects, 
or  the  zeal  of  selfishness,  or  the  delusion  of  the  senses,  has 
engrafted  upon  the  unchanging  principles  of  morals ;  and 
accepting  intelligence  wherever  it  exists,  from  the  collision 
of  parties  and  the  strife  in  the  world  of  opinions,  he  gathers 
together  the  universal  truths  which  of  necessity  constitute 


90  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIIL 

\i I  the  common  creed  of  mankind.     There  is  a  natural  sagacity 
!  of  sympathy,  which  separates  what  belongs  to  the  individ- 
ual  from  that  which  commends  itself  to  universal  reason. 
Quakerism  "is  a  most  rational  system."     Judgment  is  to 

J  be  made  not  from  the  rash  and  partial  mind,  but  from  the 
eternal  light  that  never  errs.  The  divine  revelation  is  uni- 
versal, and  compels  assent.  The  jarring  reasonings  of 
individuals  have  filled  the  world  with  controversies  and 
debates  ;  the  true  light  pleads  its  excellency  in  every  breast. 
Neither  may  the  divine  revelation  be  confounded  with  in- 
dividual conscience  ;  for  the  conscience  of  the  individual 
follows  judgment,  and  may  be  warped  by  self-love  and 
debauched  by  lust.  The  Turk  has  no  remorse  for  sensual 
indulgence,  for  he  has  defiled  his  judgment  with  a  false 
opinion.  The  papist,  if  he  eat  flesh  in  Lent,  is  reproved 
by  the  inward  monitor ;  for  that  monitor  is  blinded  by  a 
false  belief.  The  true  light  is  therefore  not  the  reason  of 
the  individual,  nor  the  conscience  of  the  individual ;  it  is 
the  light  of  universal  reason ;  the  voice  of  universaL  con- 
,  science,  "  manifesting  its  own  verity,  in  that  it  is  confirmed 
and  established  by  the  experience  of  all  men."  Moreover, 
it  has  the  characteristic  of  necessity.  "  It  constrains  even 
its  adversaries  to  plead  for  it."  "  It  never  contradicts  sound 
reason,"  and  is  the  noblest  and  most  certain  rule  ;  for  "  the 
divine  revelation  is  so  evident  and  clear  of  itself  that  by  its 
own  evidence  and  clearness  it  irresistibly  forces  the  well- 
disposed  understanding  to  assent." 

But  would  the  Inner  Light  bend  to  the  authority  of 
written  inspiration  ?  The  Bible  was  the  religion  of  Prot- 
estants ;  had  the  Quaker  a  better  guide  ?  The  Quaker 
believed  in  the  unity  of  truth ;  there  can  be  no  contradic- 
tion between  right  reason  and  previous  revelation,  between 
just  tradition  and  an  enlightened  conscience.  But  the 
Spirit  is  the  criterion.  The  Spirit  is  the  guide  which  leads 
into  all  truth.  The  Quaker  reads  the  Scriptures  with 
delight,  but  not  with  idolatry.  It  is  his  own  soul  which 
bears  the  valid  witness  that  they  are  true.  The  letter  is 
not  the  Spirit ;  the  Bible  is  not  religion,  but  a  record  of 
religion.     "  The  Scriptures,"  —  such  are  Barclay's  words  — 


Chap.  XXIII.  THE  QUAKERS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.       91 

"are  a  declaration  of  the  fountain,  and  not  the  fountain 
itself." 

Far  from  rejecting  Christianity,  the  Quaker  insisted  that 
he  alone  maintained  its  primitive  simplicity.  The  skeptic 
for  ever  vibrated  between  opinions ;  the  Quaker  was  fixed 
even  to  dogmatism.  The  infidel  rejected  religion ;  the 
Quaker  cherished  it  as  his  life.  The  scoffer  pushed  free- 
dom to  dissoluteness ;  the  Quaker  circumscribed  freedom 
by  obedience  to  truth.  George  Fox  and  Yoltaire  both  pro- 
tested against  priestcraft ;  Voltaire  in  behalf  of  the  senses,^ 
Fox  in  behalf  of  the  soul.  To  the  Quakers  Christianity  is" 
freedom.  And  they  loved  to  remember  that  the  patriarchs 
were  graziers,  that  the  prophets  were  mechanics  and  shep- 
herds, that  John  Baptist,  the  greatest  of  envoys,  was  clad 
in  a  rough  garment  of  camel's  hair.  To  them  there  was  joy 
in  the  thought  that  the  brightest  image  of  divinity  on  earth 
had  been  born  in  a  manger,  had  been  reared  under  the  roof 
of  a  carpenter,  had  been  content  for  himself  and  his  guests 
with  no  greater  luxury  than  barley  loaves  and  fishes,  and 
that  the  messengers  of  his  choice  had  been  rustics  like 
themselves.  Nor  were  they  embarrassed  by  knotty  points 
of  theology.  Their  creed  did  not  vary  with  the  subtilties 
of  verbal  criticism ;  they  revered  the  eternity  of  the  Inner 
Light  without  regard  to  the  arguments  of  grammarians  on 
the  use  of  the  Greek  article.  Did  philosophers  and  divines 
involve  themselves  in  the  mazes  of  liberty  and  fixed  decrees, 
of  foreknowledge  and  fate,  the  monitor  in  the  Quaker's 
breast  was  to  him  the  sufliicient  guarantee  of  freedom.  Did 
men  defend  or  reject  the  Trinity  by  learned  dissertations 
and  minute  criticisms  on  various  readings,  he  avoided  the 
use  of  the  word,  and  despised  the  jargon  of  disputants  ;  but 
the  idea  of  God  with  us,  the  incarnation  of  the  Spirit,  the 
union  of  Deity  with  humanity,  was  to  the  Quaker  the  dear- 
est and  the  most  sublime  symbol  of  man's  enfranchisement. 

As  a  consequence  of  this  faith,  every  avenue  to  truth  was 
to  be  kept  open.  "  Christ  came  not  to  extinguish,  but  to 
improve  the  heathen  knowledge."  "  The  difference  between 
the  philosophers  of  Greece  and  the  Christian  Quaker  is 
rather  in  manifestation  than  in  nature."     He  cries  Stand,  to 


92 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIIL 


every  thought  that  knocks  for  entrance  ;  but  welcomes  it  as 
a  friend,  if  it  gives  the  watchword.  Exulting  in  the  won- 
derful bond  which  admitted  him  to  a  communion  with  all 
the  sons  of  light,  of  every  nation  and  age,  he  rejected  with 
scorn  the  school  of  Epicurus ;  he  had  no  sympathy  with  the 
follies  of  the  skeptics,  and  esteemed  even  the  mind  of  Aris- 
totle too  much  bent  upon  the  outward  world.  But  Aristotle 
himself,  in  so  far  as  he  grounds  philosophy  on  virtue  and 
self-denial,  and  every  contemplative  sage,  orators  and  phil- 
osophers, statesmen  and  divines,  were  gathered  as  a  cloud 
of  witnesses  to  the  same  unchanging  truth.  "  The  Inner 
Light,"  said  Penn,  "  is  the  domestic  God  of  Pythagoras." 
Tiie  voice  in  the  breast  of  George  Fox,  as  he  kept  sheep  on 
the  hills  of  Nottingham,  was  the  spirit  which  had  been  the 
good  genius  and  guide  of  Socrates.  Above  all,  the  Christian 
Quaker  delighted  in  "  the  divinely  contemplative  Plato," 
the  "famous  doctor  of  gentile  theology,"  and  recognised  the 
identity  of  the  Inner  Light  with  the  divine  principle  which 
dwelt  with  Plotinus.     Quakerism  is  as  old  as  humanity. 

The  Inner  Light  is  to  the  Quaker  not  only  the  revelation 
of  truth,  but  the  guide  of  life  and  the  oracle  of  duty.  He 
demands  the  uniform  predominance  of  the  world  of  thought 
over  the  world  of  sensation.  The  blameless  enthusiast,  well 
aware  of  the  narrow  powers  and  natural  infirmities  of  man, 
yet  aims  at  perfection  from  sin ;  and,  tolerating  no  compro- 
mise, demands  the  harmonious  development  of  man's  higher 
powers  with  the  entire  subjection  of  the  base  to  the  nobler 
instincts.  The  motives  to  conduct  and  its  rule  are,  like 
truth,  to  be  sought  in  the  soul. 

Thus  the  doctrine  of  disinterested  virtue — the  doctrine 
for  w^hich  Guyon  was  persecuted  and  Fenelon  disgraced, 
the  doctrine  which  tyrants  condemn  as  rebellion,  and  priests 
as  heresy  —  was  cherished  by  the  Quaker  as  the  foundation 
of  morality.  Self-denial  he  enforced  with  ascetic  severity, 
yet  never  with  ascetic  superstition.  He  might  array  himself 
fantastically  to  express  a  truth  by  an  apparent  symbol,  but 
he  never  wore  sackcloth  as  an  anchorite.  "  Thoughts  of 
death  and  hell  to  keep  out  sin  were  to  him  no  better  than 
fig-leaves."     He  would  obey  the  imperative  dictate  of  truth, 


Chap.  XXIH.  THE  QUAKERS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.       93 

even  though  the  fires  of  hell  were   quenched.     Virtue   is 
happiness  ;  heaven  is  with  her  always. 

The  Quakers  knew  no  superstitious  vows  of  celibacy; 
they  favored  no  nunneries,  monasteries,  "  or  religious  bed- 
lams;" but  they  demanded  purity  of  life  as  essential  to  the 
welfare  of  society,  and  founded  the  institution  of  marriage 
on  permanent  affection,  not  on  transient  passion.  Their 
matches,  they  were  wont  to  say,  are  registered  in  heaven. 
Has  a  recent  school  of  philosophy  discovered  in  wars  and 
pestilence,  in  vices  and  poverty,  salutary  checks  on  popula- 
tion ?  The  Quaker,  confident  of  the  supremacy  of  mind, 
feared  no  evil,  though  plagues  and  war  should  cease,  and 
vice  and  poverty  be  banished  by  intelligent  culture.  Des- 
potism favors  the  liberty  of  the  senses ;  and  popular  freedom 
rests  on  sanctity  of  morals.  To  the  Quaker,  licentiousness  is 
the  greatest  bane  of  good  order  and  good  government. 

The  Quaker  revered  principles,  not  men,  truth,  not 
power,  and  therefore  could  not  become  the  tool  of  ambi- 
tion. "  They  are  a  people,"  said  Cromwell,  "  whom  I  can- 
not win  with  gifts,  honors,  ofiices,  or  places."  Still  less  was 
the  Quaker  a  slave  to  avarice.  Seeking  wisdom,  and  not 
the  philosopher's  stone,  to  him  the  love  of  money  for 
money's  sake  was  the  basest  of  passions,  and  the  rage  of 
indefinite  accumulation  was  "  oppression  to  the  poor,  com- 
pelling those  who  have  little  to  drudge  like  slaves."  "  That 
the  sweat  and  tedious  labor  of  the  husbandmen,  early  and 
late,  cold  and  hot,  wet  and  dry,  should  be  converted  into 
the  pleasure,  ease,  and  pastime  of  a  small  number  of  men, 
that  the  cart,  the  plough,  the  thresh,  should  be  in  inordinate 
severity  laid  upon  nineteen  parts  of  the  land  to  feed  the 
appetites  of  the  twentieth,  is  far  from  the  appointment  of 
the  great  Governor  of  the  world."  It  is  best  the  people  be 
neither  rich  nor  poor ;  for  riches  bring  luxury,  and  luxury 
tyranny. 

The  supremacy  of  mind,  forbidding  the  exercise  of  tyr- 
anny as  a  means  of  government,  attempted  a  reformation  of 
society,  but  only  by  means  addressed  to  conscience.  The 
system  contained  a  reform  in  education  ;  it  demanded  that 
children  should  be  brought  up,  not  in  the  pride  of  caste, 


94  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIH. 

still  less  by  methods  of  violence ;  but  as  men,  by  methods 
suited  to  the  intelligence  of  humanity.  Life  should  never 
be  taken  for  an  offence  against  property,  nor  the  person 
imprisoned  for  debt.  And  the  same  train  of  reasoning  led 
to  a  protest  against  war.  The  Quaker  believed  in  the  power 
of  justice  to  protect  itself ;  for  himself,  he  renounced  the  use 
of  the  sword ;  and,  aware  that  the  vices  of  society  might 
entail  danger  on  a  nation  not  imbued  with  his  principles,  he 
did  not  absolutely  deny  to  others  the  right  of  defence,  but 
looked  forward  with  hope  to  the  period  when  the  progress 
of  civilization  should  realize  the  vision  of  a  universal  and 
enduring  peace. 

The  supremacy  of  mind  abrogated  ceremonies ;  the 
Quaker  regarded  "  the  substance  of  things,"  and  broke  up 
forms  as  the  nests  of  superstition.  Every  Protestant  re- 
fused the  rosary  and  the  censer ;  the  Quaker  rejects  com- 
mon prayer,  and  his  adoration  of  God  is  the  free  language 
of  his  soul.  He  remembers  the  sufferings  of  divine  philan- 
thropy, but  uses  neither  wafer  nor  cup.  He  trains  up  his 
children  to  fear  God,  but  never  sprinkles  them  with  bap- 
tismal water.  He  ceases  from  labor  on  the  first  day  of  the 
week,  for  the  ease  of  creation,  and  not  from  reverence  for  a 
holiday.  The  Quaker  is  a  pilgrim  on  earth,  and  life  is  the 
ship  that  bears  him  to  the  haven  ;  he  mourns  in  his  mind  for 
the  departure  of  friends  by  respecting  their  advice,  taking 
care  of  their  children,  and  loving  those  that  they  loved; 
and  this  seems  better  than  outward  emblems  of  sorrowing. 
His  words  are  always  freighted  with  innocence  and  truth  ; 
God,  the  searcher  of  hearts,  is  the  witness  to  his  sincerity ; 
but  kissing  a  book  or  lifting  a  hand  is  a  superstitious  van- 
ity, and  the  sense  of  duty  cannot  be  increased  by  an  im- 
precation. 

The  Quaker  distrusts  the  fine  arts,  they  are  so  easily 
perverted  to  the  purposes  of  superstition  and  the  delight 
of  the  senses.  Yet,  when  they  are  allied  with  virtue,  and 
express  the  nobler  sentiments,  they  are  very  sweet  and 
refreshing.  The  comedy  where,  of  old,  Aristophanes  ex- 
cited the  Athenians  to  hate  Socrates,  and  where  the  profli- 
gate gallants  of  the  court  of  Charles  II.  assembled  to  hear 


Chap.  XXIH.   THE  QUAKERS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


95 


the  drollery  of  Nell  Gwyn  heap  ridicule  on  the  Quakers, 
was  condemned  without  mercy.  But  the  innocent  diver- 
sions of  society,  the  delights  of  rural  life,  the  pursuits  of 
science,  the  study  of  history,  would  not  interfere  with  aspi- 
rations after  God.  For  apparel,  the  Quaker  dresses  soberly, 
according  to  his  condition  and  education  ;  far  from  prescrib- 
ing an  unchanging  fashion,  he  holds  it  "  no  vanity  to  use 
what  the  country  naturally  produces,"  and  reproves  nothing 
but  that  extravagance  which  "all  sober  men  of  all  sorts 
readily  grant  to  be  evil." 

Like  vanities  of  dress,  the  artifices  of  rhetoric  were  de- 
spised. Truth,  it  was  said,  is  beautiful  enough  in  plain 
clothes ;  and  Penn,  who  was  able  to  write  exceedingly  well, 
often  forgot  that  style  is  the  gossamer  on  which  the  seeds 
of  truth  float  through  the  world. 

Careless  of  style,  the  Quakers  employ  for  the  propagation 
of  truth  no  weapons  but  those  of  mind.  They  distributed 
tracts  ;  but  they  would  not  sustain  their  doctrine  by  a  hire- 
ling ministry.  "  A  man  thou  hast  corrupted  to  thy  inter- 
ests will  never  be  faithful  to  them  ; "  and  an  established 
church  seemed  "  a  cage  for  unclean  birds."  When  a  great 
high-priest,  who  was  a  doctor,  had  finished  preaching  from 
the  words,  "  Ho  every  one  that  thirsteth,  come  buy  without 
money,"  George  Fox  "  was  moved  of  the  Lord  to  say  to 
him,  '  Come  down,  thou  deceiver !  Dost  thou  bid  people 
come  to  the  waters  of  life  freely,  and  yet  thou  takest  three 
hundred  pounds  a  year  of  them?'  The  Spirit  is  a  free 
teacher." 

Still  less  would  the  Quaker  employ  the  methods  of  perse- 
cution. He  was  a  zealous  Protestant,  but  in  the  season  of 
highest  excitement  he  pleaded  for  absolute  liberty  of  wor- 
ship, and  sought  to  enfranchise  the  Roman  Catholic  him- 
self. To  persecute,  he  esteemed  a  confession  of  a  bad 
cause  ;  for  the  design  that  is  of  God  has  confidence  in 
itself,  and  knows  that  any  other  will  vanish.  "  Your  cruel- 
ties are  a  confirmation  that  truth  is  not  on  your  side,"  was 
the  remonstrance  of  a  woman  of  Aberdeen  to  the  magis- 
trates who  had  imprisoned  her  husband. 

In  like  manner,  the  Quaker  never   employed   force   to 


96  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIIL 

effect  a  social  revolution  or  reform,  but,  refusing  obedi- 
ence to  wrong,  deprived  tyranny  of  its  instruments.  The 
Quaker's  loyalty,  said  the  Earl  of  Arrol  at  Aberdeen,  is  a 
qualified  loyalty  ;  it  smells  of  rebellion  :  to  which  Alexan- 
der Skein,  brother  to  a  subsequent  governor  of  West 
1676.  New  Jersey,  calmly  answered  :  "  I  understand  not 
loyalty  that  is  not  qualified  with  the  fear  of  God 
rather  than  of  man."  The  Quaker  never  would  pay  tithes', 
never  yielded  to  any  human  law  which  traversed  his  con- 
science. He  did  more :  he  resisted  tyranny  with  all  the 
moral  energy  of  enthusiasm,  bearing  witness  against  blind 
obedience  not  less  than  against  will  worship.  Believing  in 
the  supremacy  of  mind  over  matter,  he  sought  no  control 
over  the  government  except  by  intelligence  ;  and  therefore 
he  needed  to  hold  the  right  of  free  discussion  inviolably 
sacred.  He  never  consented  to  the  slightest  compromise 
of  this  freedom.  Wherever  there  was  evil  and  oppression, 
he  claimed  the  right  to  be  present  with  a  remonstrance. 
He  delivered  his  opinions  freely  before  Cromwell  and 
Charles  II.,  in  face  of  the  gallows  in  New  England,  in  the 
streets  of  London,  before  the  English  commons.  The 
heaviest  penalties  that  bigotry  could  devise  never  induced 
him  to  swerve  a  hair's-breadth  from  his  purpose  of  speak- 
ing freely  and  publicly.  This  was  his  method  of  resist- 
ing tyranny.  Algernon  Sydney,  who  took  money  from 
Louis  XIV.,  like  Brutus,  would  have  plunged  a  dagger 
into  the  breast  of  a  tyrant ;  the  Quaker,  without  a  bribe, 
resisted  tyranny  by  appeals  to  the  monitor  in  the  tyrant's 
breast,  and  he  labored  incessantly  to  advance  reform  by 
enlightening  the  public  conscience.  Any  other  method 
of  revolution  he  believed  an  impossibility.  Government 
^-  such  was  his  belief  —  will  always  be  as  the  people  are  ; 
and  a  people  imbued  with  the  love  of  liberty  create  the 
irresistible  necessity  of  a  free  government.  He  sought  no 
revolution  but  that  which  followed  as  the  consequence  of 
the  public  intelligence.  Such  revolutions  were  inevitable. 
"  Though  men  consider  it  not,  the  Lord  rules  and  overrules 
in  the  kingdoms  of  men."  Any  other  revolution  would  be 
transient.      The   Quakers  submitted  to  the  restoration  of 


Chap.  XXIII.  THE  QUAKERS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.       97 

Charles  II.,  as  the  best  arrangement  for  the  crisis,  confident 
that  time  and  truth  would  lead  to  a  happier  issue.  "  The 
best  frame,  in  ill  hands,  can  do  nothing  that  is  great  and 
good.  Governments,  like  clocks,  go  from  the  motion  im- 
parted to  them  ;  they  depend  on  men  rather  than  men  on 
government.  Let  men  be  good,  the  government  cannot  be 
bad  ;  if  it  be  ill,  they  will  cure  it."  Even  witli  absohite 
power,  an  Antonine  or  an  Alfred  could  not  make  bricks 
without  straw,  nor  the  sword  do  more  than  substitute  one 
tyranny  for  another. 

The  moral  power  of  ideas  is  constantly  effecting  improve- 
ment in  society.  No  Quaker  book  has  a  trace  of  skej^ticism 
on  man's  capacity  for  progress.  Such  is  the  force  of  an 
honest  profession  of  truth,  the  humblest  person,  if  single- 
minded  and  firm,  "  can  shake  all  the  country  for  ten  miles 
round."  The  integrity  of  the  Inner  Light  is  an  invincible 
power.  It  is  a  power  which  never  changes ;  such  was  the 
message  of  Fox  to  the  pope,  the  kings,  and  nobles  of  all 
sorts ;  it  fathoms  the  world,  and  throws  down  that  which  is 
contrary  to  it.  It  quenches  fire ;  it  daunts  wild  beasts  ;  it 
turns  aside  the  edge  of  the  sword  ;  it  outfaces  instruments 
of  cruelty ;  it  converts  executioners.  It  was  remembered 
with  exultation  that  the  enfranchisements  of  Christianity 
were  the  result  of  faith,  and  not  of  the  sword ;  and  that 
truth  in  its  simplicity,  radiating  from  the  foot  of  the  cross, 
has  filled  a  world  of  sensualists  with  astonishment,  over- 
thrown their  altars,  discredited  their  oracles,  infused  itself 
into  the  soul  of  the  multitude,  invaded  the  court,  risen 
superior  to  armies,  and  led  magistrates  and  priests,  states- 
men and  generals,  in  its  train,  as  the  trophies  of  its  strength 
exerted  in  its  freedom. 

Thus  the  Quaker  was  cheered  by  a  firm  belief  in  the 
progress  of  society.  Even  Aristotle,  so  many  centuries 
ago,  recognised  the  upward  tendency  in  human  affairs  ;  a 
Jewish  contemporary  of  Barclay  declared  that  progress  to 
be  a  tendency  towards  popular  power ;  George  Fox  per- 
ceived that  the  Lord's  hand  was  against  kings ;  and  one 
day,  on  the  hills  of  Yorkshire,  he  had  a  vision  that  he  was 
but  beginning  the  glorious  work  of  God  in  the  earth  ;  that 

VOL.  II.  7 


98  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIIL 

his  followers  would  in  time  become  as  numerous  as  motes 
in  the  sunbeams;  and  that  the  party  of  humanity  would 
gather  the  whole  human  race  in  one  sheepfold,  Neither 
art,  wisdom,  nor  violence,  said  Barclay,  conscious  of  the 
vitality  of  truth,  shall  quench  the  little  spark  that  hath 
appeared.  The  atheist  —  such  was  the  common  opinion  of 
the  Quakers  —  the  atheist  alone  denies  progress,  and  says 
in  his  heart :  All  things  continue  as  they  were  in  the  be- 
ginning. 

If,  from  the  rules  of  private  morality,  we  turn  to  political 
institutions,  here  also  the  principle  of  the  Quaker  is  the 
Inner  Light.  He  acquiesces  in  any  established  government 
which  shall  build  its  laws  upon  the  declarations  of  "uni- 
versal reason."  But  government  is  a  part  of  his  religion : 
and  the  religion  that  declares  "  every  man  enlightened  by 
the  divine  lisfht "  establishes  o^overnment  on  universal  and 
equal  enfranchisement. 

"  Not  one  of  mankind,"  says  Penn,  "  is  exempted  from 
this  illumination."  "  God  discovers  himself  to  every  man." 
He  is  in  every  breast,  in  the  ignorant  drudge  as  well  as 
in  Locke  or  Leibnitz.  Every  moral  truth  exists  in  every 
man's  and  woman's  heart,  as  an  incorruptible  seed  ;  the 
ground  may  be  barren,  but  the  seed  is  certainly  there. 
Every  man  is  a  little  sovereign  to  himself.  Freedom  is  as 
old  as  reason  itself,  which  is  given  to  all,  constant  and 
eternal,  the  same  to  all  nations.  The  Quaker  is  no  mate- 
rialist ;  truth  and  conscience  are  not  in  the  laws  of  coun- 
tries ;  they  are  not  one  thing  at  Rome,  and  another  at 
Athens;  they  cannot  be  abrogated  by  senate  or  people. 
Freedom  and  the  right  of  property  were  in  the  world 
before  Protestantism  ;  they  came  not  with  Luther ;  they 
do  not  vanish  with  Calvin  ;  they  are  the  common  privilege 
of  mankind. 

The  Bible  enfranchises  those  only  to  whom  it  is  carried ; 
Christianity,  those  only  to  whom  it  is  made  known ;  the 
creed  of  a  sect,  those  only  within  its  narrow  pale.  The 
Quaker,  resting  his  system  on  the  Inner  Light,  redeems 
the  race.  Of  those  who  believe  in  the  necessity  of  faith  in 
an  outward  religion,  some  have  cherished  the  mild  super- 


Chap.  XXIII.  THE  QUAKERS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


99 


stition  that,  in  the  hour  of  dissolution,  an  angel  is  sent  from 
heaven  "  to  manifest  the  doctrine  of  Christ's  passion  ; "  the 
Quaker  believes  that  the  heavenly  messenger  is  always 
present  in  the  breast  of  every  man,  ready  to  counsel  the 
willing  listener. 

Man  is  equal  to  his  fellow-man.  No  class  can,  "by  long 
apprenticeship  "  or  a  prelate's  breath,  by  wearing  black  or 
shaving  the  crown,  obtain  a  monopoly  of  moral  truth. 
There  is  no  distinction  of  clergy  and  laity. 

The  Inner  Light  sheds  its  blessings  on  the  whole  human 
race ;  it  knows  no  distinction  of  sex.  It  redeems  woman 
by  the  dignity  of  her  moral  nature,  and  claims  for  her  the 
equal  culture  and  free  exercise  of  her  endowments.  As 
the  human  race  ascends  the  steep  acclivity  of  improvement, 
the  Quaker  cherishes  woman  as  the  equal  companion  of  the 
journey. 

Nor  does  he  know  an  abiding  distinction  of  king  and 
subject.  The  universality  of  the  Inner  Light  "  brings 
crowns  to  the  dust,  and  lays  them  low  and  level  with  the 
earth."  "  The  Lord  will  be  king ;  there  will  be  no  crowns 
but  to  such  as  obey  his  will."  With  God  a  thousand  years 
are  indeed  as  one  day ;  yet  judgment  on  tyrants  will  come 
at  last,  and  may  come  ere  long. 

Every  man  has  God  in  the  conscience  ;  therefore  the 
Quaker  knows  no  distinction  of  castes.  He  bows  to  God, 
and  not  to  his  fellow-servant.  "  All  men  are  alike  by  crea- 
tion," says  Barclay ;  and  it  is  slavish  fear  which  reverences 
others  as  gods.  "  I  am  a  man,"  says  every  Quaker,  and  re- 
fuses homage.  The  most  favored  of  his  race,  even  though 
endowed  with  the  gifts  and  glories  of  an  angel,  he  would 
regard  but  as  his  fellow-servant  and  his  brother.  The  feu- 
dal nobility  still  nourished  its  pride.  "Nothing,"  says 
Penn,  "  nothing  of  man's  folly  has  less  show  of  reason  to 
palliate  it."  "  What  a  pother  has  this  noble  blood  made 
in  the  world ! "  "  But  men  of  blood  have  no  marks  of 
honor  stampt  upon  them  by  nature."  The  Quaker  scorned 
to  take  off  his  hat  to  any  of  them ;  he  held  himself  the  peer 
of  the  proudest  peer  in  Christendom.  With  the  eastern 
despotism  of  Diocletian,  Europe  had  learned  the  hyperboles 


100  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIIL 

of  eastern  adulation  ;  but  "  My  Lord  Peter  and  My  Lord 
Paul  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  Bible  ;  My  Lord  Solon  or 
Lord  Scipio  is  not  to  be  read  in  Greek  or  Latin  stories." 
And  the  Quaker  returned  to  the  simplicity  of  Gracchus  and 
Demosthenes,  though  "  Thee  and  Thou  proved  a  sore  cut  to 
proud  flesh."  This  was  not  done  for  want  of  courtesy, 
which  "  no  religion  destroys ; "  but  he  knew  that  the  hat 
was  the  symbol  of  enfranchisement,  worn  before  the  king  by 
the  peers  of  the  realm,  in  token  of  equality ;  and  the  sym- 
bol, as  adopted  by  the  Quaker,  was  a  constant  proclamation 
that  all  men  are  equal. 

Thus  the  doctrine  of  George  Fox  was  not  only  a  plebeian 
form  of  philosophy,  but  also  the  prophecy  of  political 
changes.  The  spirit  that  made  to  him  the  revelation  was  the 
invisible  spirit  of  the  age,  rendered  wise  by  tradition,  and 
excited  to  insurrection  by  the  enthusiasm  of  liberty  and 
religion.  Everywhere  in  Europe,  therefore,  the  Quakers 
were  exposed  to  persecution.  Their  seriousness  was  called 
melancholy  fanaticism ;  their  boldness,  self-will ;  their  fru- 
gality, covetousness ;  their  freedom,  infidelity ;  their  con- 
science, rebellion.  In  England,  the  general  laws  against 
dissenters,  the  statute  against  papists,  and  special  statutes 
against  themselves,  put  them  at  the  mercy  of  every  malig- 
nant informer.  They  were  hated  by  the  church  and  the 
Presbyterians,  by  the  peers  and  the  king.  The  codes  of 
that  day  describe  them  as  "  an  abominable  sect ; "  "  their 
principles  as  inconsistent  with  any  kind  of  government." 
During  the  Long  Parliament,  in  the  time  of  the  protecto- 
rate, at  the  restoration,  in  England,  in  New  England,  in 
the  Dutch  colony  of  New  Netherland,  everywhere,  and  for 
wearisome  years,  they  were  exposed  to  perpetual  dangers 
and  griefs ;  they  were  whipped,  crowded  into  jails  among 
felons,  kept  in  dungeons  foul  and  gloomy  beyond  imagina- 
tion, fined,  exiled,  sold  into  colonial  bondage.  They  bore 
the  brunt  of  the  persecution  of  the  dissenters.  Imprisoned 
in  winter  without  fire,  they  perished  from  frost.  Some 
were  victims  to  the  barbarous  cruelty  of  the  jailer.  Twice 
George  Fox  narrowly  escaped  death.  The  despised  people 
braved  every  danger  to  continue  their  assemblies.     Haled 


1675.         THE   QUAKERS  IN  THE   UNITED   STATES.  101 

out  by  violence,  they  returned.  When  their  meeting- 
houses were  torn  down,  they  gathered  openly  on  the  ruins. 
They  could  not  be  dissolved  by  armed  men  ;  and  when 
their  opposers  took  shovels  to  throw  rubbish  on  them,  they 
stood  close  together,  "willing  to  have  been  buried  alive, 
witnessing  for  the  Lord."  They  were  exceeding  great 
sufferers  for  their  profession,  and  in  some  cases  treated 
worse  than  the  worst  of  the  race.  They  were  as  poor  sheep 
appointed  to  the  slaughter,  and  as  a  people  killed  all  day 
long. 

Is  it  strange  that  they  looked  beyond  the  Atlantic       i674. 
for  a  refuge  ?    When  New  Netherland  was  recovered 
from  the  united  provinces,  Berkeley  and  Carteret  entered 
again  into  possession  of  their  province.     For  Berkeley,  al- 
ready a  very  old  man,  the  visions  of  colonial  fortune  had  not 
been  realized ;  there  was  nothing  before  him  but  contests 
for  quit-rents  with   settlers   resolved    on   governing 
themselves  ;  and  in  March,  1674,  a  few  months  after  Mar.  is. 
the  return  of  George  Fox  from  his  pilgrimage  to  all 
our  colonies  from  Carolina  to  Rhode  Island,  the  haughty 
peer,  for  a  thousand  pounds,  sold  the  moiety  of  New  Jersey 
to  Quakers,  to  John  Fenwick  in  trust  for  Edward  Byllinge 
and  his  assigns.     A  dispute  between  Byllinge  and  Fenwick 
was  allayed  by  the  benevolent  decision  of  William 
Penn ;  and,  in  1675,  Fenwick,  with  a  large  company       i675. 
and  several  families,  set  sail  in  the  "  Griffith  "  for  the 
asylum  of  Friends.     Ascending  the  Delaware,  he  landed  on 
a  pleasant,  fertile  spot ;    and,  as  the  outward  world  easily 
takes  the  hues  of  men's  minds,  he  called  the  place   Salem, 
for  it  seemed  the  dwelling-place  of  peace. 

Byllinge  was  embarrassed  in  his  fortunes ;  Gawen  Laurie, 
William  Penn,  and  Nicholas  Lucas  became  his  assigns  as 
trustees  for  his  creditors,  and  shares  in  the  undivided  moi- 
ety of  New  Jersey  were  offered  for  sale.  As  an  affair  of 
property,  it  was  like  our  land  companies  of  to-day ;  except 
that  in  those  days  speculators  bought  acres  by  the  hundred 
thousand.  But  the  Quakers  wished  more  ;  they  desired  to 
possess  a  territory  where  they  could  institute  a  govern- 
ment j  and  Carteret  readily  agreed  to  a  division,  for  his 


102  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIII. 

1676.  partners  left  him  the  best  of  the  bargain.  And  now 
Aug.  26.  tiiat  the  men  who  had  gone  about  to  turn  the  world 
upside  down  were  possessed  of  a  province,  what  system  of 
politics  would  they  adopt  ?  The  light  that  lighteth  every 
man  shone  brightly  in  the  pilgrims  of  Pl^-mouth,  the 
Calvinists  of  Hooker  and  Haynes,  and  in  the  freemen  of 
Virginia,  when  the  transient  abolition  of  monarchy  com- 
pelled even  royalists  to  look  from  the  throne  to  a  surer 
guide  in  the  heart ;  the  Quakers,  following  the  same  ex- 
alted instincts,  could  but  renew  the  fundamental  legislation 
of  the  men  of  the  "  Mayflower,"  of  Hartford,  and  of  the  Old 
Dominion.  "  The  coxcessioxs  are  such  as  Friends  approve 
of;"  this  is  the  message  of  the  Quaker  iDroprietaries  in 
England  to  the  few  who  had  emigrated  :  "  We  lay  a  foun- 
dation for  after  ages  to  understand  their  liberty  as  Chris- 
tians and  as  men,  that  they  may  not  be  brought  into 
bondage  but  by  their  own  consent ;  for  we  put  the 
Mar?^'3  POWEE  IN  THE  PEOPLE."  And  ou  the  third  day 
of  March,  1677,  the  fundamental  laws  of  West 
New  Jersey  were  perfected  and  published.  They  are 
written  with  almost  as  much  method  as  our  present  con- 
stitutions, and  recognise  the  principle  of  democratic  equal- 
ity as  unconditionally  and  universally  as  the  Quaker  society 
itself. 

No  man,  nor  number  of  men,  hath  power  over  conscience. 
No  person  shall  at  any  time,  in  any  ways,  or  on  any  pre- 
tence, be  called  in  question,  or  in  the  least  punished  or 
hurt  for  opinion  in  religion.  The  general  assembly  shall 
be  chosen,  not  by  the  confused  way  of  cries  and  voices, 
but  by  the  balloting  box.  Every  man  is  capable  to  choose 
or  be  chosen.  The  electors  shall  give  their  respective 
deputies  instructions  at  large,  which  these,  in  their  turn,  by 
indentures  under  hand  and  seal,  shall  bind  themselves  to 
obey.  The  disobedient  deputy  may  be  questioned  before 
the  assembly  by  any  one  of  his  electors.  Each  member  is 
to  be  allowed  one  shilling  a  day,  to  be  paid  by  his  immediate 
constituents,  "  that  he  may  be  known  as  the  servant  of  the 
people."  The  executive  power  rested  with  ten  commis- 
sioners, to  be  appointed  by  the   assembly ;    justices   and 


1678.         THE   QUAKERS  IN  THE   UNITED   STATES.  103 

constables  were  chosen  directly  by  the  people;  the  judges, 
appointed  by  the  general  assembly,  retained  office  but  two 
years  at  the  most,  and  sat  in  the  courts  but  as  assistants  to 
the  jury.  In  the  twelve  men,  and  in  them  only,  judgment 
resides  ;  in  them  and  in  the  general  assembly  rests  discretion 
as  to  punishments.  "  All  and  every  person  in  the  province 
shall,  by  the  help  of  the  Lord  and  these  fundamentals,  be 
free  from  oppression  and  slavery."  No  man  can  be  im- 
prisoned for  debt.  Courts  were  to  be  managed  without 
the  necessity  of  an  attorney  or  counsellor.  The  native 
was  protected  against  encroachments;  the  hel2:)less  orijhan 
educated  by  the  state. 

Immediately  the  English  Quakers,  with  the  good  wishes 
of  Charles  II.,  flocked  to  West  New  Jersey ;  and  commis- 
sioners, possessing  a  temporary  authority,  were  sent  to 
administer  affairs  till  a  popular  government  could  be  insti- 
tuted. When  the  vessel,  freighted  with  the  men  of  peace^ 
arrived  iii  America,  Andros,  the  governor  of  New  York, 
claimed  jurisdiction  over  their  territory.  The  claim,  which, 
on  the  feudal  system,  was  perhaps  a  just  one,  was  com- 
promised as  a  present  question,  and  referred  for  decision  to 
England.  Meantime,  lands  were  purchased  of  the  Indians  ; 
the  planters  numbered  nearly  four  hundred  souls ;  and, 
already  at  Burlington,  under  a  tent  covered  with  sail-cloth, 
the  Quakers  began  to  hold  religious  meetings.  The 
Indian  kings  also  gathered  in  council  under  the  1678. 
shades  of  the  Burlington  forests,  and  declared  their 
joy  at  the  prospect  of  permanent  peace.  "  You  are  our 
brothers,"  said  the  sachems,  "  and  we  will  live  like  brothers 
with  you.  We  will  have  a  broad  path  for  you  and  us  to 
walk  in.  If  an  Englishman  falls  asleep  in  this  path,  the 
Indian  shall  pass  him  by,  and  say.  He  is  an  Englishman  ; 
he  is  asleep ;  let  him  alone.  The  path  shall  be  plain  ;  there 
shall  not  be  in  it  a  stump  to  hurt  the  feet." 

Every  thing  augured  success  to  the  colony,  but  that,  at 
Newcastle,  the  agent  of  the  Duke  of  York,  who  still  pos- 
sessed Delaware,  exacted  customs  of  the  ships  ascending  to 
New  Jersey.  It  may  have  been  honestly  believed  that  his 
jurisdiction  included  the  whole  river ;  when  urgent  reraon- 


104  COLONIAL   HISTORY.  Chap.  XXm. 

strances  were  made,  the  duke  referred  the  question  to  a 
disinterested  commission,  before  which  the  Quakers  reasoned 
thus : — 

1678  to  "  An  express  grant  of  the  powers  of  government 
1680.  induced  us  to  buy  the  moiety  of  New  Jersey.  If  we 
could  not  assure  people  of  an  easy,  free,  and  safe  govern- 
ment, liberty  of  conscience,  and  an  inviolable  possession 
of  their  civil  rights  and  freedoms,  a  mere  wilderness  would 
be  no  encouragement.  It  were  madness  to  leave  a  free 
country  to  plant  a  wilderness,  and  give  another  person  an 
absolute  title  to  tax  us  at  will. 

"  The  customs  imposed  by  the  government  of  New  York 
are  not  a  burden  only,  but  a  wrong.  By  what  right  are 
we  thus  used  ?  The  king  of  England  cannot  take  his 
subjects'  goods  without  their  consent.  This  is  a  home-born 
right,  declared  to  be  law  by  divers  statutes. 
•  "  To  give  up  the  right  of  making  laws  is  to  change  the 
government  and  resign  ourselves  to  the  will  of  another. 
The  land  belongs  to  the  natives  ;  of  the  duke  we  buy  nothing 
but  the  right  of  an  undisturbed  colonizing,  with  the  ex- 
pectation of  some  increase  of  the  freedoms  enjoyed  in  our 
native  country.  We  have  not  lost  English  liberty  by  leaving 
England. 

"  The  tax  is  a  surprise  on  the  planter  :  it  is  paying  for 
the  same  thing  twice  over.  Custom,  levied  upon  planting, 
is  unprecedented.  Besides,  there  is  no  end  of  this  power. 
By  this  precedent,  we  are  assessed  without  law,  and  ex- 
cluded from  our  Eno^lish  riajlit  of  common  assent  to  taxes. 
We  can  call  nothing  our  own,  but  are  tenants  at  will,  not 
for  the  soil  only,  but  for  our  personal  estates.  Such  conduct 
has  destroyed  government,  but  never  raised  one  to  true 
greatness. 

"  Lastly,  to  exact  such  unterminated  tax  from  English 
planters,  and  to  continue  it  after  so  many  repeated  com- 
plaints, will  be  the  greatest  evidence  of  a  design  to  intro- 
duce, if  the  crown  should  ever  devolve  upon  the  duke,  an 
unlimited  government  in  England." 

This  argument  of  the  Quakers  was  triumphant.  Sir 
William  Jones  decided  that,  as  the  grant  from  the  Duke  of 


1682.         THE   QUAKERS  IN   THE   UNITED   STATES.  105 

York  had  reserved  no  profit  or  jurisdiction,  the  tax  was 
illegal.     The  Duke  of  York  promptly  acqviiesced  in 
the  decision,   and  in  a  new  indenture   relinquished    ^^^/q^ 
every  claim  to  the  territory  and  the  government. 

After  such  trials,  vicissitudes,  and  success,  the  light  of 
peace  dawned  upon  West  New  Jersey ;  and  in  November, 
1681,  Jennings,  acting  as  governor  for  the  proprietaries, 
convened  the  first  legislative  assembly  of  the  representatives 
of  men  who  said  thee  and  thou  to  all  the  world,  and  wore 
their  hats  in  presence  of  beggar  or  king.  Their  first  meas- 
ures established  their  rights  by  an  act  of  fundamental  legis- 
lation, and,  in  the  spirit  of  "  the  Concessions,"  they  framed 
their  government  on  the  basis  of  humanity.  Neither  faith, 
nor  wealth,  nor  race  was  respected.  They  met  in  the 
wilderness  as  men,  and  founded  society  on  equal  rights. 
What  shall  we  relate  of  a  community  thus  organized  ?  That 
they  multiplied,  and  were  happy?  that  they  levied  for  the' 
expenses  of  their  commonwealth  two  hundred  pounds,  to 
be  paid  in  corn,  or  skins,  or  money?  that  they  voted  the 
governor  a  salary  of  twenty  pounds  ?  that  they  prohibited 
the  sale  of  ardent  spirits  to  the  Indians  ?  that  they  forbade 
imprisonment  for  debt  ?  The  formation  of  this  little  govern- 
ment of  a  few  hundred  souls,  that  soon  increased  to  thou- 
sands, is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  incidents  in  the  history 
of  the  age.  West  New  Jersey  had  been  a  fit  home  for 
F^nelon.  The  people  rejoiced  under  the  reign  of  God, 
confident  that  he  would  beautify  the  meek  with  salvation. 
A  loving  correspondence  began  with  Friends  in  England, 
and  from  the  fathers  of  the  sect  frequent  messages 
were  received.  "  Friends  that  are  gone  to  make  JJgg! 
plantations  in  America,  keep  the  plantations  in  your 
hearts,  that  your  own  vines  and  lilies  be  not  hurt.  You 
that  are  governors  and  judges,  you  should  be  eyes  to  the 
blind,  feet  to  the  lame,  and  fathers  to  the  poor  ;  that  you 
may  gain  the  blessing  of  those  who  are  ready  to  perish,  and 
cause  the  widow's  heart  to  sing  for  gladness.  If  you  rejoice 
because  your  hand  hath  gotten  much ;  if  you  say  to  fine 
gold,  Thou  art  my  confidence,  —  you  will  have  denied  the 


106  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIH. 

God  that  is  above.     The  Lord  is  ruler  among  nations ;  he 
will  crown  his  people  with  dominion." 

In  the  midst  of  this  innocent  tranquillity,  Byllinge,  the 
original  grantee  of  Berkeley,  claimed  as  proprietary  the 
right  of  nominating  the  deputy  governor.  The  usurpation 
was  resisted.  Byllinge  grew  importunate  ;  and  the  Quakers, 
setting  a  new  precedent,  amended  their  constitutions  ac- 
cording to  the  prescribed  method,  and  then  elected  a  gov- 
ernor. This  method  of  reform  was  the  advice  of  William 
Pexx. 
^^„^  For  in  the  mean  time  William  Penn  had  become 

1682.  T  T       .  T    •         1  »..,.. 

deeply  mterested  in  the  progress  of  civilization  on  the 
Delaware.  In  company  with  eleven  others,  he  had  purchased 
East  New  Jersey  of  the  heirs  of  Carteret.  But  of  the  east- 
ern moiety  of  New  Jersey,  peopled  chiefly  by  Puritans,  the 
history  is  intimately  connected  with  that  of  New  York. 
The  line  that  divides  East  and  West  New  Jersey  is  the  line 
where  the  influence  of  the  humane  society  of  Friends  is 
merged  in  that  of  Puritanism. 


1680.  PENNSYLVANIA.  107 


CHAPTER   XXIV. 


PENNSYLVANIA. 


It  was  for  the  grant  of  a  territory  on  the  opposite  bank 
of  the  Delaware  that  William  Penn,  in  June,  1680, 
became  a  suitor.  His  father,  distinguished  in  English  j^^^i 
history  by  the  conquest  of  Jamaica,  and  by  his  con- 
duct, discretion,  and  courage,  in  the  signal  battle  against  the 
Dutch  in  1665,  had  bequeathed  to  him  a  claim  on  the  gov- 
ernment for  sixteen  thousand  pounds.  Massachusetts  had 
bought  Maine  for  a  little  more  than  one  thousand  pounds ; 
then,  and  long  afterwards,  colonial  property  was  lightly 
esteemed ;  and  to  the  prodigal  Charles  II.,  always  embar- 
rassed for  money,  the  grant  of  a  province  seemed  the  easiest 
mode  of  cancelling  the  debt.  William  Penn  had  powerful 
friends  in  North,  Halifax,  and  Sunderland;  and  a  pledge 
given  to  his  father  on  his  death-bed  obtained  for  him  the 
assured  favor  of  the  Duke  of  York. 

Sustained  by  such  friends,  and  pursuing  his  object  with 
enthusiasm,  William  Penn  triumphed  over  "  the  great  oppo- 
sition "  which  he  encountered,  and  obtained  a  charter  for 
the  territory,  which  received  from  Charles  II.  the  name  of 
Pennsylvania,  and  which  was  to  include  three  degrees  of 
latitude  by  five  degrees  of  longitude  west  from  the  Dela- 
ware. The  Duke  of  York  desired  to  retain  the  three  lower 
counties,  that  is,  the  state  of  Delaware,  as  an  appendage  to 
New  York ;  Pennsylvania  was  therefore,  in  that  direction, 
limited  by  a  circle  drawn  at  twelve  miles'  distance  from 
Newcastle,  northward  and  westward,  unto  the  beginning  of 
the  fortieth  degree  of  latitude.  This  impossible  boundary 
received  the  assent  of  the  agents  of  the  Duke  of  York  and 
Lord  Baltimore. 

The  charter,  as  originally  drawn  up  by  William  Penn 


108  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIV. 

himseK,  conceded  powers  of  government  analogous  to  those 
of  the  charter  for  Maryland.  That  nothing  might  be  at 
variance  with  English  law,  it  was  revised  by  the 
jIm!  attorney-general,  and  amended  by  Lord  North,  who 
inserted  clauses  to  guard  the  sovereignty  of  the  king 
and  the  commercial  supremacy  of  parliament.  The  acts  of 
the  future  colonial  legislature  were  to  be  submitted  to  the 
king  and  council,  who  had  power  to  annul  them  if  contrary 
to  English  law.  The  power  of  levying  customs  was  ex- 
pressly reserved  to  parliament.  The  bishop  of  London, 
quite  unnecessarily,  claimed  security  for  the  English  church. 
The  people  of  the  country  were  to  be  safe  against  taxation, 
except  by  the  provincial  assembly  or  the  English  i^arliament. 
In  other  respects,  the  usual  franchises  of  a  feudal  proprie- 
tary were  conceded. 

1681.  At  length,  writes  William  Penn,  "After  many 
Mar.  5.  -^aitings,  watchings,  solicitings,  and  disputes  in  coun- 
cil, my  country  was  confirmed  to  me  under  the  great  seal  of 
England.  God  will  bless  and  make  it  the  seed  of  a  nation. 
I  shall  have  a  tender  care  of  the  government,  that  it  be  well 
laid  at  first." 

Pennsylvania  included  the  principal  settlements  of  the 
Swedes ;  and  patents  for  land  had  been  made  to  Dutch 
and  English  by  the  Dutch  West  India  company,  and  after- 
wards by  the  Duke  of  York.  The  royal  proclamation 
Apr.  2.  soon  announced  to  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  province 
that  William  Penn,  their  absolute  proprietary,  was 
invested  with  all  powers  and  pre-eminences  necessary  for 
the  government.  The  proprietary  also  issued  his  proclama- 
tion to  his  vassals  and  subjects.  It  was  in  the  following 
words  :  — 

"  My  Fkiends,  —  I  wish  you  all  happiness  here  and  here- 
after. These  are  to  lett  you  know,  that  it  hath  pleased 
God  in  his  Providence  to  cast  you  within  my  Lott  and 
Care.  It  is  a  business,  that  though  I  never  undertook 
before,  yet  God  has  given  me  an  understanding  of  my  duty 
and  an  honest  minde  to  doe  it  uprightly.  I  hope  you  will 
not  be  troubled  at  your  chainge  and  the  king's  choice ;  for 


1681.  PENNSYLVANIA.  109 

you  are  now  fixt,  at  the  mercy  of  no  Governour  that  comes 
to  make  his  fortune  great.  You  shall  be  governed  by  laws 
of  your  own  makeing,  and  live  a  free,  and  if  you  will,  a 
sober  and  industreous  People.  I  shall  not  usurp  the  right 
of  any,  or  oppress  his  person.  God  has  furnisht  me  with  a 
better  resolution,  and  has  given  me  his  grace  to  keep  it.  In 
short,  whatever  sober  and  free  men  can  reasonably  desire 
for  the  security  and  improvement  of  their  own  happiness,  I 
shall  heartily  comply  with.  I  beseech  God  to  direct  you  in 
tl\e  way  of  righteousness,  and  therein  prosper  you  and  your 
children  after  you.     I  am  your  true  Friend, 

"  Wm.  Penn. 
"London,  8th  of  the  month  called  April,  1681." 

Such  were  the  pledges  of  the  Quaker  sovereign  on  assum- 
ing the  government ;  it  is  the  duty  of  history  to  state  that, 
during  his  long  reign,  these  pledges  were  redeemed.  He 
never  refused  the  free  men  of  Pennsylvania  a  reasonable 
desire. 

With  this  letter  to  the  inhabitants,  young  Mark-  lesi. 
ham  immediately  sailed  as  agent  of  the  proprietary.  -"^^y- 
He  was  to  govern  in  harmony  with  law,  and  the  people 
were  requested  to  continue  the  established  system  of  rev- 
enue till  Penn  himself  could  reach  America.  During 
the  summer,  the  conditions  for  the  sale  of  lands  Juiyii. 
wei^  reciprocally  ratified  by  Penn  and  a  company  of 
adventurers.  The  enterprise  of  planting  a  province  had 
been  vast  for  a  man  of  large  fortunes ;  Penn's  whole  estate 
had  yielded,  when  unencumbered,  a  revenue  of  fifteen  hun- 
dred pounds;  but,  in  his  zeal  to  rescue  his  suffering  brethren 
from  persecution,  he  had,  by  heavy  expenses  in  courts  of  law 
and  at  court,  impaired  his  resources,  which  he  might  hope 
to  retrieve  from  the  sale  of  domains.  Would  he  sacrifice 
his  duty  as  a  man  to  his  emoluments  as  a  sovereign  ?  In 
August,  a  company  of  traders  offered  six  thousand  pounds 
and  an  annual  revenue  for  a  monopoly  of  the  Indian  traflSo 
between  the  Delaware  and  the  Susquehannah.  To  a  father 
of  a  family,  in  straitened  circumstances,  the  temptation  was 
great ;  but  Penn  was  bound,  by  his  religion,  to  equal  laws, 


110 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIV. 


and  he  rebuked  the  cupidity  of  monopoly.  "I  will  not 
abuse  the  love  of  God,"  —  such  was  his  decision,  —  "  nor  act 
unworthy  of  his  Providence,  by  defiling  what  came  to  me 
clean.  No ;  let  the  Lord  guide  me  by  his  wisdom,  to  honor 
his  name  and  serve  his  truth  and  people,  that  an  example 
and  a  standard  may  be  set  up  to  the  nations ; "  and  he  adds 
to  a  Friend  :  "  There  may  be  room  there,  though  not  here, 
for  the  Holy  Experiment." 

1681.  With  a  company  of  emigrants,  full  instructions 
Sept.  30.  ^yej.g  forwarded  respecting  lands  and  planting  a  city. 
Penn  disliked  the  crowded  towns  of  the  Old  World;  he 
desired  the  city  might  be  so  planted  with  gardens  round 

each  house  as  to  form  "a  greene  country  town." 
Oct.  18.   And  almost  at  the  same  time  he«addressed  a  letter  to 

the  natives  of  the  American  forest,  declaring  himself 
and  them  responsible  to  one  and  the  same  God,  having  the 
same  law  written  in  their  hearts,  and  alike  bound  to  love 
and  help  and  do  good  to  one  another. 

Meantime,  the  mind  of  Penn  was  deeply  agitated  by 
thoughts  on  the  government  which  he  should  establish.  To 
him  government  was  a  part  of  religion  itself,  an  emanation 
of  divine  power,  capable  of  kindness,  goodness,  and  charity  ; 
having  an  opportunity  of  benevolent  care  for  men  of  the 
highest  attainments,  even  more  than  the  office  of  correcting 
evil-doers ;  and,  without  imposing  one  uniform  model  on  all 
the  world,  without  denying  that  time,  place,  and  emergen- 
cies may  bring  with  them  a  necessity  or  an  excuse  for  mon- 
archical or  even  aristocratical  institutions,  he  believed  "  any 
government  to  be  free  to  the  people,  where  the  laws  rule, 
and  the  people  are  a  party  to  the  laws."  That  Penn  was 
superior  to  avarice,  was  clear  from  his  lavish  expenditures 
to  relieve  the  imprisoned ;  that  he  had  risen  above  ambition, 
appeared  from  his  preference  of  the  despised  Quakers  to  the 
career  of  high  advancement  in  the  court  of  Charles  II.  But 
he  loved  to  do  good;  and  could  passionate  philanthropy 
resign  absolute  power,  apparently  so  favorable  to  the  ex- 
ercise of  vast  benevolence  ?  Here,  and  here  only,  Penn's 
1682  spirit  was  severely  tried  ;  but  he  resisted  the  tempta- 
i^ay  5.    tion.     "  I  purpose,"  —  such  was  his  prompt  decision, 


1682.  PENNSYLVANIA.  Ill 

— "  for  the  matters  of  liberty  I  purpose,  that  which  is 
extraordinary  —  to  leave  myself  and  successors  no  power 
of  doeing  mischief  ;  that  the  will  of  one  man  may  not  hinder 
the  good  of  a  whole  country."  "  It  is  the  great  end  of  gov- 
ernment to  support  power  in  reverence  with  the  people,  and 
to  secure  the  people  from  tlie  abuse  of  power ;  for  liberty 
without  obedience  is  confusion,  and  obedience  without  lib- 
erty is  slavery."  Taking  counsel,  therefore,  from  all  sides, 
listening  to  the  theories  of  Algernon  Sydney,  whose  Roman 
pride  was  ever  faithful  to  the  good  old  republican  cause, 
and  deriving  still  better  guidance  from  the  suavity  and 
humanity  of  his  Quaker  brethren,  Penn  published  a  frame 
of  government,  not  as  an  established  constitution,  but  as  a 
system  to  be  referred  to  the  freemen  in  Pennsylvania. 

About  the  same  time,  a  free  society  of  traders  was  1682. 
organized.  "  It  is  a  very  unusual  society,"  —  such  ^^^  ^^" 
was  their  advertisement,  —  "  for  it  is  an  absolute  free  one, 
and  in  a  free  country  ;  every  one  may  be  concerned  that 
will,  and  yet  have  the  same  liberty  of  private  traffique,  as 
though  there  were  no  society  at  all." 

To  perfect  his  territory,  Penn  desired  to  possess  the  bay, 
the  river,  and  the  shore  of  the  Delaware  to  the  ocean.  The 
territories  or  three  lower  counties,  now  forming  the  state  of 
Delaware,  were  in  possession  of  the  Duke  of  York,  and, 
from  the  conquest  of  New  Netherland,  had  been  esteemed 
an  appendage  to  his  province.  His  claim,  arising  from  con- 
quest and  possession,  had  the  informal  assent  of  the  king 
and  the  privy  council,  and  had  extended  even  to  the  upper 
Swedish  settlements.  It  was  not  difficult  to  obtain  from  the 
duke  a  release  of  his  claim  on  Pennsylvania ;  and, 
after  much  negotiation,  the  lower  province  was  Aug.  24. 
granted  by  two  deeds  of  feoffment.  From  the  forty- 
third  degree  of  latitude  to  the  Atlantic,  the  western  and 
southern  banks  of  Delaware  River  and  Bay  were  under  the 
dominion  of  William  Penn. 

Every  arrangement  for  a  voyage  to  his  province  being 
finished,  Penn,  in  a  beautiful  letter,  took  leave  of  his  family. 
His  wife,  who  was  the  love  of  his  youth,  he  reminded  of  his 
impoverishment   in  consequence   of  his  public   spirit,  and 


112  COLONIAL  HISTOKY.  Chap.  XXIV. 

recommended  economy:  "  Live  low  and  sparingly  till  my 
debts  be  paid."  Yet  for  his  children  he  adds  :  "Let  their 
learning  be  liberal ;  spare  no  cost,  for  by  such  parsimony  all 
is  lost  that  is  saved."  Agriculture  he  proposed  as  their 
employment.  "  Let  my  children  be  husbandmen  and  house- 
wives." Friends  in  England  watched  his  departure  with 
anxious  hope ;  on  him  rested  the  expectations  of  their  soci- 
ety, and  their  farewell  at  parting  was  given  with  "  the  inno- 
cence and  tenderness  of  the  child  that  has  no  guile." 

After  a  long  passage,  rendered  gloomy  by  frequent  death 
among  the  passengers,  many  of  whom  had  in  Eng- 
oSv.    •'^^^  been  his  immediate  neighbors,  on  the  twenty- 
seventh  day  of  October,  1682,  William  Penn  landed 
at  Newcastle. 

The  son  and  grandson  of  naval  officers,  his  thoughts  had 
from  boyhood  been  directed  to  the  ocean  ;  the  conquest  of 
Jamaica  by  his  father  early  familiarized  his  imagination 
with  the  New  World,  and  in  Oxford,  at  the  age  of  seven- 
teen, he  indulged  in  visions  of  happiness,  of  which  America 
was  the  scene.  Bred  in  the  school  of  Independency,  he  had, 
while  hardly  twelve  years  old,  learned  to  listen  to  the  voice 
of  God  in  his  soul ;  and  at  Oxford,  where  his  excellent  gen- 
ius received  the  benefits  of  learning,  the  words  of  a 
1661.  Quaker  jDreacher  so  touched  his  heart  that  he  was 
fined  and  afterwards  expelled  for  non-conformity. 
His  father,  bent  on  subduing  his  enthusiasm,  beat  him  and 
turned  him  into  the  streets,  to  choose  between  poverty  with 
a  pure  conscience,  or  fortune  with  obedience.  But  how 
could  the  hot  anger  of  a  petulant  sailor  continue  against  an 
only  son?  It  was  in  the  days  of  the  glory  of  Descartes 
that,  to  complete  his  education,  William  Penn  received  a 
father's  permission  to  visit  the  continent. 

From  the  excitements  and  the  instruction  of  travel,  for 
which  the  passion  is  sometimes  stronger  than  love  or  am- 
bition, the  young  exile  turned  aside  to  the  college 
1663!  ^*  Saumur,  where,  under  the  guidance  of  the  gifted 
and  benevolent  Amyrault,  his  mind  was  trained  in 
the  severities  of  Calvinism,  as  tempered  by  the  spirit  of 
universal  love. 


1667.  PENNSYLVANIA.  113 

In  the  next,  year,  Penn,  having  crossed  the  Alps,       i664. 
was  just  entering  Piedmont,  when  the  appointment 
of  his  father  to  the  command  of  a  British  squadron,  in  the 
naval  war  with  Holland,  compelled  his  return  to  the  care 
of  the  estates  of  the  family.     The  discipline  of  society  and 
travel  had  given  him  grace  of  manners,  enhanced  by  severe 
but  unpretending  purity  of   morals  ;    and   in  London  the 
travelled    student   of   Lincoln's  Inn,   if   diligent   in 
gaining  a  knowledge  of   English  law,  was  yet  es-       HH' 
teemed  a  most  modish  fine  gentleman.     In  France, 
the  science  of  the  Huguenots  had  nourished  reflection ;  in 
London,  every  sentiment  of  sympathy  was  excited  by  the 
horrors  which  he  witnessed  during  the  devastations  of  the 
plague. 

Having  thus  perfected  his  understanding  by  the  1665. 
learning  of  Oxford,  the  religion  and  philosophy  of 
the  French  Huguenots  and  France,  and  the  study  of  the 
laws  of  England,  in  the  bloom  of  youth,  being  of  engaging 
manners,  and  so  skilled  in  the  use  of  the  sword  that  he 
easily  disai-med  an  antagonist,  of  great  natural  vivacity  and 
gay  good  humor,  the  career  of  wealth  and  preferment 
opened  before  him  through  the  influence  of  his  father  and 
the  ready  favor  of  his  sovereign.  But  his  mind  was  already 
imbued  Vith  "  a  deep  sense  of  the  vanity  of  the  world,  and 
the  irreligiousness  of  its  religions." 

In  1666,  on  a  journey  in  Ireland,  William  Penn  leee. 
heard  his  old  friend  Thomas  Loe  speak  of  the  faith 
that  overcomes  the  world ;  the  undying  fires  of  enthusiasm 
at  once  blazed  up  within  him,  and  he  renounced  every  hope 
for  the  path  of  integrity.  It  is  a  path  into  which,  says 
Penn,  "  God,  in  his  everlasting  kindness,  guided  my  feet  in 
the  flower  of  my  youth,  when  about  two-and-twenty  years 
of  age."  And  in  the  autumn  of  that  year  he  was  in  jail  for 
the  crime  of  listening  to  the  voice  of  conscience.  "  Re- 
ligion," such  was  his  remonstrance  to  the  viceroy  of  Ire- 
land, "  is  my  crime  and  my  innocence  ;  it  makes  me  a 
prisoner  to  malice,  but  my  own  freeman." 

After  his  enlargement,  returning  to  England,  he       i6r>6. 
encountered  bitter  mockings  and  scornings,  the  in-       ^^^* 

VOL.  II.  8 


114  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIV. 

vectives  of  the  priests,  the  strangeness  of  all  his  old  com- 
panions ;  it  was  noised  about,  in  the  fashionable  world,  as 
an  excellent  jest,  that  "  William  Penn  was  a  Quaker  again, 
or  some  very  melancholy  thing ; "  and  his  father,  in 

1667.  anger,  turned  him  penniless  out  of  doors. 

The  outcast,  saved  from  extreme  indigence  by  a 

1668.  mother's  fondness,  became  an  author,  and  announced 
to  princes,  priests,  and  people,  that  he  was  one  of  the 

despised,  afflicted,  and  forsaken  Quakers ;  and,  repairing  to 
court  with  his  hat  on,  he  sought  to  engage  the  Duke  of 
Buckingham  in  favor  of  liberty  of  conscience,  claimed  from 
those  in  authority  better  quarters  for  dissenters  than  stocks 
and  whips  and  dungeons  and  banishments,  and  was  urging 
the  cause  of  freedom  with  importunity,  when  he  himself, 
in  the  heyday  of  youth,  was  consigned  to  a  long  and  close 
imprisonment  in  the  Tower.     His  offence  was  heresy  :  the 

bishop  of  London  menaced  him  with  imprisonment 
1669!       ^^^'  ^^^®  unless  he  would  recant.     "  My  prison  shall 

be  my  grave,"  answered  Penn.  The  kind-hearted 
Charles  II.  sent  the  humane  and  candid  Stillingfleet  to 
calm  the  young  enthusiast.  "The  Tower,"  such  was  Penn's 
message  to  the  king,  "  is  to  me  the  worst  argument  in  the 
world."  In  vain  did  Stillingfleet  urge  the  motive  of  royal 
favor  and  preferment ;  the  inflexible  young  man  demanded 
freedom  of  Arlington,  "  as  the  natural  privilege  of  an  Eng- 
lishman." Club-law,  he  argued  with  the  minister,  may 
make  hypocrites  ;  it  never  can  make  converts.  Conscience 
needs  no  mark  of  public  allowance.  It  is  not  like  a  bale  of 
goods  that  is  to  be  forfeited  unless  it  has  the  stamp  of  the 
custom-house.  After  losing  his  freedom  for  about  nine 
months,  his  prison  door  was  opened  by  the  intercession  of 
his  father's  friend,  the  Duke  of  York ;  for  his  constancy  had 
commanded  the  respect  and  recovered-  the  favor  of  his 
father. 

The  Quakers,  exposed  to  judicial  tyranny,  were  led,  by 
the  sentiment  of  humanity,  to  find  a  barrier  against  their 
oppressors  by  narrowing  the  application  of  the  common 
law,  and  restricting  the  right  of  judgment  to  the  jury. 
Scarcely  had   Penn   been   at   liberty  a   year,  when,  after 


1671. 


PENNSYLVANIA.  115 


the  intense  intolerance  of  "  the  conventicle  act,"  he 
was  arraigned  for  having  spoken  at  a  Quaker  meet-  ge^Jt.'a. 
ing.  "Not  all  the  powers  on  earth  shall  divert  us 
from  meeting  to  adore  our  God  who  made  us."  Thus  did 
the  young  man  of  five-and-twenty  defy  the  English  legisla- 
ture ;  and  he  demanded  on  what  law  the  indictment  was 
founded.  "  On  the  common  law,"  answered  the  recorder. 
"  Where  is  that  law  ?  "  demanded  Penn.  "  The  law  which 
is  not  in  being,  far  from  being  common,  is  no  law  at  all." 
Amidst  angry  exclamations  and  menaces,  he  proceeded  to 
plead  earnestly  for  the  fundamental  laws  of  England,  and, 
as  he  was  hurried  out  of  court,  still  reminded  the  jury  that 
"they  were  his  judges."  Dissatisfied  with  the  first  verdict 
returned,  the  recorder  heaped  upon  the  jury  every  oppro- 
brious epithet.  "  We  will  have  a  verdict,  by  the  help  of 
God,  or  you  shall  starve  for  it."  "  You  are  Englishmen," 
said  Penn,  who  had  been  again  brought  to  the  bar ;  "  mind 
your  privilege,  give  not  away  your  right."  "  It  never  will 
be  well  with  us,"  said  the  recorder,  "  till  something  like  the 
Spanish  inquisition  be  in  England."  At  last,  the  jury,  who 
had  received  no  refreshments  for  two  days  and  two 
nights,  on  the  third  day,  gave  their  verdict,  "Not  Sept. 5. 
guilty."  The  recorder  fined  them  forty  marks  apiece 
for  their  independence,  and,  amercing  Penn  for  contempt 
of  court,  sent  him  back  to  prison.  The  trial  was  an  era  in 
judicial  history.  The  fines  were  soon  afterwards  discharged 
by  his  father,  who  was  now  approaching  his  end.  "  Son 
William,"  said  the  dying  admiral,  "  if  you  and  your  friends 
keep  to  your  plain  way  of  preaching  and  living,  you  will 
make  an  end  of  the  priests." 

Inheriting  a  large  fortune,  he  continued  to  defend  pub- 
licly, from  the  press,  the  principles  of  intellectual  liberty 
and  moral  equality ;  he  remonstrated  in  unmeasured  terms 
against  the  bigotry  and  intolerance,  "  the  hellish  darkness 
and  debauchery,"  of  the  university  of  Oxford ;  he  exposed 
the  errors  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  and  in  the  same 
breath  pleaded  for  a  toleration  of  their  worship;  and, 
never  fearing  openly  to  address  a  Quaker  meeting,  jg^Q^ 
he  was  soon  on  the  road  to  Newgate,  to  suffer  for      ^6^^- 


116 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIV. 


bis  honesty  by  a  six  months'  imprisonment.  "You  are 
an  ingenious  gentleman,"  said  the  magistrate  at  the  trial; 
"  you  have  a  plentiful  estate ;  why  should  you  render 
yourself  unhappy  by  associating  with  such  a  simple  peo- 
ple ?  "  "I  prefer,"  said  Penn,  "  the  honestly  simple  to  the 
ingeniously  wicked."  The  magistrate  rejoined  by  charg- 
ing Penn  with  previous  immoralities.  The  young  man, 
with  passionate  vehemence,  vindicated  the  spotlessness  of 
his  life.  "  I  speak  this,"  he  adds,  "  to  God's  glory,  who  has 
ever  preserved  me  from  the  power  of  these  pollutions,  and 
who,  from  a  child,  begot  a  hatred  in  me  towards  them." 
"  Thy  words  shall  be  thy  burden  ;  I  trample  thy  slander  as 
dirt  under  my  feet." 

From  Newgate,  Penn  addressed  parliament  and  the  nation 
in  the  noblest  plea  for  liberty  of  conscience ;  a  liberty  which 
he  defended  by  arguments  drawn  from  experience,  from 
religion,  and  from  reason.  If  the  efforts  of  the  Quakers 
cannot  obtain  "  the  olive  branch  of  toleration,  we  bless  the 
providence  of  God,  resolving  by  patience  to  outweary  per- 
secution, and  by  our  constant  sufferings  to  obtain  a  victory 
more  glorious  than  our  adversaries  can  achieve  by  their 
cruelties." 

On  his  release  from  imprisonment,  a  calmer  season 
^leis!'  followed.  Penn  travelled  in  Holland  and  Germany; 
then  returning  to  England,  he  married  a  woman  of 
extraordinary  beauty  and  sweetness  of  temper,  whose  noble 
spirit  "  chose  him  before  many  suitors,"  and  honored  him 
with  "  a  deep  and  upright  love."  As  persecution  in  Eng- 
land was  suspended,  he  enjoyed  for  two  years  the  delights 
of  rural  life  and  the  animating  pursuit  t)f  letters  ;  till  the 
storm  was  renewed,  and  the  imprisonment  of  George  Fox, 
on  his  return  from  America,  demanded  intercession.  What 
need  of  narrating  the  severities,  which,  like  a  slow  poison, 
brought  the  prisoner  to  the  borders  of  the  grave?  Why 
enumerate  the  atrocities  of  petty  tyrants,  invested  with 
village  magistracies,  the  ferocious  passions  of  irresponsible 
jailers  ?  The  statute-book  of  England  contains  the  clearest 
impress  of  the  bigotry  which  a  national  church  could  foster 
and  a  parliament  avow ;  and  Penn,  in  considering  England's 


1678.  PENNSYLVANIA.  IIT 

present  interest,  far  from  resting  his  appeal  on  the  senti- 
ment of  mercy,  merited  the  highest  honors  of  a  statesman 
by  the  profound  sagacity  and  unbiassed  judgment  with 
which  he  unfolded  the  question  of  the  rights  of  conscience 
in  its  connection  with  the  peace  and  happiness  of  the 
state. 

It  was  this  love  of  freedom  of  conscience  which  gave  in- 
terest to  his  exertions  for  New  Jersey.  The  summer  and 
autumn  after  the  first  considerable  Quaker  emigration  to 
the  eastern  bank  of  the  Delaware,  George  Fox  and  William 
Penn  and  Robert  Barclay,  with  others,  embarked  for  Hol- 
land, to  evangelize  the  continent ;  and  Barclay  and  Penn 
went  to  and  fro  in  Germany,  from  the  Weser  to  the  Mayne, 
the  Rhine,  and  the  Neckar,  distributing  tracts,  discoursing 
with  men  of  every  sect  and  every  rank,  preaching  in  pal- 
aces and  among  the  peasants,  rebuking  every  attempt  to 
inthrall  the  mind,  and  sending  reproofs  to  kings  and  magis- 
trates, to  the  princes  and  lawyers  of  all  Christendom.  The 
soul  of  William  Penn  was  transported  into  fervors  of  de- 
votion ;  and,  in  the  ecstasies  of  enthusiasm,  he  explained 
"  the  universal  principle "  at  Herford,  in  the  court  of  the 
princess  palatine,  and  to  the  few  Quaker  converts  among 
the  peasantry  of  Kirchheim.  To  the  peasantry  of  the 
highlands  near  Worms,  the  visit  of  William  Penn  was  i678. 
an  event  never  to  be  forgotten. 

The  opportunity  of  observing  the  aristocratic  institutions 
of  Holland  and  the  free  commercial  cities  of  Germany  was 
valuable  to  a  statesman.  On  his  return  to  England,  the 
new  sufferings  of  the  Quakers  excited  a  direct  appeal  to 
the  English  parliament.  The  special  law  against  papists 
was  turned  against  the  Quakers ;  Penn  explained  the  differ- 
ence between  his  society  and  the  papists ;  and  yet,  at  a 
season  when  Protestant  bigotry  was  become  a  frenzy,  he 
appeared  before  a  committee  of  the  house  of  commons  to 
plead  for  universal  liberty  of  conscience.  "  We  must  give 
the  liberty  we  ask :  "  such  was  the  sublime  language  of  the 
Quakers  ;  "  we  cannot  be  false  to  our  principles,  though  it 
were  to  relieve  ourselves ;  for  we  would  have  none  to  suffer 
for  dissent  on  any  hand." 


118  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIV. 

jg^g  Defeated  in  his  hopes  by  the  dissolution  of  the  par- 

liament, Penn  took  an  active  part  in  the  ensuing 
elections.  He  urged  the  electors  throughout  England  to 
know  their  own  strength  and  authority ;  to  hold  their  rep- 
resentatives to  be  properly  and  truly  their  servants,  to 
maintain  their  liberties,  their  share  in  legislation,  and  their 
share  in  the  application  of  the  laws.  "Your  well-being," 
these  were  his  words,  "  depends  upon  your  preservation  of 
your  right  in  the  government.  You  are  free;  God  and 
nature  and  the  constitution  have  made  you  trustees  for 
posterity.  Choose  men  who  will,  by  all  just  and  legal  ways, 
firmly  keep  and  zealously  promote  your  power."  And  as 
Algernon  Sydney  now  "  embarked  with  those  that  did  seek, 
love,  and  choose  the  best  things,"  William  Penn  engaged 
in  the  election,  and  obtained  for  him  a  majority  which  was 
defeated  only  by  a  false  return. 

But  every  hope  of  reform  from   parliament  van- 

1680  %f  JL  X 

ished.  Bigotry  and  tyranny  prevailed  more  than 
ever;  and  Penn,  despairing  of  relief  in  Europe,  bent  the 

energy  of  his  mind  to  the  establishment  of  a  free 
Oct^27    government  in  the  New  World.     For  that  "heavenly 

end  "  he  was  prepared  by  the  severe  discipline  of 
life,  and  the  love,  without  dissimulation,  which  formed  the 
basis  of  his  character.  The  sentiment  of  cheerful  human- 
ity was  irrepressibly  strong  in  his  bosom ;  as  with  John 
Eliot  and  Roger  Williams,  benevolence  gushed  prodigally 
from  his  ever  overflowing  heart ;  and  when,  in  his  late  old 
age,  his  intellect  was  impaired  and  his  reason  prostrated  by 
apoplexy,  his  sweetness  of  disposition  rose  serenely  over 
the  clouds  of  disease.  Possessing  an  extraordinary  great- 
ness of  mind,  vast  conceptions,  remarkable  for  their  uni- 
versality and  precision,  and  "  surpassing  in  speculative 
endowments;"  conversant  with  men,  and  books,  and  gov- 
ernments, with  various  languages,  and  the  forms  of  political 
combinations,  as  they  existed  in  England  and  France,  in 
Holland  and  the  principalities  and  free  cities  of  Germany, 
he  yet  sought  the  source  of  wisdom  in  his. own  soul.  Hu- 
mane by  nature  and  by  suffering;  familiar  with  the  royal 
family  ;  intimate  with  Sunderland  and  Sydney  ;  acquainted 


1682.  PENNSYLVANIA. 


119 


with  Russell,  Halifax,  Shaftesbury,  and  Buckingham ;  as  a 
member  of  the  Royal  Society,  the  peer  of  Newton  and  the 
great  scholars  of  his  age,  —  he  vahied  the  promptings  of  a 
free  mind  above  the  awards  of  the  learned,  and  reverenced 
the  single-minded  sincerity  of  the  Nottingham  shepherd 
more  than  the  authority  of  colleges  and  the  wisdom  of 
philosophers.  And  now,  being  in  the  meridian  of  life, 
but  a  year  older  than  was  Locke  when,  twelve  years  be- 
fore, he  had  framed  a  constitution  for  Carolina,  the  Quaker 
legislator  was  come  to  the  New  World  to  lay  the  founda- 
tions of  states.  Would  he  imitate  the  vaunted  system  of 
the  great  philosopher?  Locke,  like  William  Penn,  was 
tolerant ;  both  loved  freedom ;  both  cherished  truth  in  sin- 
cerity. But  Locke  kindled  the  torch  of  liberty  at  the  fires 
of  tradition  ;  Penn,  at  the  living  light  in  the  soul.  Locke 
sought  truth  through  the  senses  and  the  outward  world  ; 
Penn  looked  inward  to  the  divine  revelations  in  every  mind. 
Locke  compared  the  soul  to  a  sheet  of  white  paper,  just  as 
Hobbes  had  compared  it  to  a  slate,  on  which  time  and 
chance  might  scrawl  their  experience  ;  to  Penn,  the  soul 
was  an  organ  which  of  itself  instinctively  breathes  divine 
harmonies,  like  those  musical  instruments  which  are  so  curi- 
ously and  perfectly  framed  that,  when  once  set  in  motion, 
they  of  themselves  give  forth  all  the  melodies  designed  by 
the  artist  that  made  them.  To  Locke,  "  Conscience  is  noth- 
ing else  than  our  own  opinion  of  our  OAvn  actions ; "  to 
Penn,  it  is  the  image  of  God,  and  his  oracle  in  the  soul. 
Locke,  who  was  never  a  father,  esteemed  "the  duty  of 
parents  to  preserve  their  children  not  to  be  understood  with- 
out reward  and  punishment ; "  Penn  loved  his  children, 
with  not  a  thought  for  the  consequences.  Locke,  who  was 
never  married,  declares  marriage  an  affair  of  the  senses; 
Penn  reverenced  woman  as  the  object  of  fervent,  inward 
affection,  made  not  for  lust,  but  for  love.  In  studying  the 
understanding,  Locke  begins  with  the  sources  of  knowl- 
edge ;  Penn,  with  an  inventory  of  our  intellectual  treasures. 
Locke  deduces  government  from  Noah  and  Adam,  rests  it 
upon  contract,  and  announces  its  end  to  be  the  security  of 
property ;  Penn,  far  from  going  back  to  Adam,  or  even  to 


120  COLONIAL  mSTOEY.  Chap.  XXIV. 

Noah,  declares  that  "  there  must  be  a  people  before  a  gov- 
ernment," and,  deducing  the  right  to  institute  government 
from  man's  moral  nature,  seeks  its  fundamental  rules  in  the 
immutable  dictates  "of  universal  reason," its  end  in  freedom 
and  happiness.  The  system  of  Locke  lends  itself  to  contend- 
ing factions  of  the  most  opposite  interests  and  purposes  ; 
the  doctrine  of  Fox  and  Penn,  being  but  the  common  creed 
of  humanity,  forbids  division,  and  insures  the  highest  moral 
unity.  To  Locke,  happiness  is  pleasure ;  things  are  good 
and  evil  only  in  reference  to  pleasure  and  pain  ;  and  to 
"  inquire  after  the  highest  good  is  as  absurd  as  to  dispute 
whether  the  best  relish  be  in  apples,  plums,  or  nuts ; "  Penn 
esteemed  happiness  to  lie  in  the  subjection  of  the  baser 
instincts  to  the  instinct  of  Deity  in  the  breast,  good  and 
evil  to  be  eternally  and  always  as  unlike  as  truth  and  false- 
hood, and  the  inquiry  after  the  highest  good  to  involve  the 
purpose  of  existence.  Locke  says  plainly  that,  but  for  re- 
wards and  punishments  beyond  the  grave,  "it  is  certainly 
right  to  eat  and  drink,  and  enjoy  what  we  delight  in ; " 
Penn,  like  Plato  and  Fenelon,  maintained  the  doctrine  so 
terrible  to  despots  that  God  is  to  be  loved  for  his  own 
sake,  and  virtue  to  be  practised  for  its  intrinsic  loveliness. 
Locke  derives  the  idea  of  infinity  from  the  senses,  describes 
it  as  purely  negative,  and  attributes  it  to  nothing  but  space, 
duration,  and  number ;  Penn  derived  the  idea  from  the 
soul,  and  ascribed  it  to  truth  and  virtue  and  God.  Locke 
declares  immortality  a  matter  with  which  reason  has  noth- 
ing to  do,  and  that  revealed  truth  must  be  sustained  by 
outward  signs  and  visible  acts  of  power;  Penn  saw  truth 
by  its  own  light,  and  summoned  the  soul  to  bear  witness  to 
its  own  glory.  Locke  believed  "  not  so  many  men  in  wrong 
opinions  as  is  commonly  supposed,  because  the  greatest  part 
have  no  opinions  at  all,  and  do  not  know  what  they  contend 
for;"  Penn  likewise  vindicated  the  many,  but  it  was  be- 
cause truth  is  the  common  inheritance  of  the  race.  Locke, 
in  his  love  of  tolerance,  inveighed  against  the  methods  of 
persecution  as  "  popish  practices  ;  "  Penn  censured  no  sect, 
but  condemned  bigotry  of  all  sorts  as  inhuman.  Locke,  as 
an  American  lawgiver,  dreaded  a  too  numerous  democracy, 


1682.  PENNSYLVANIA.  121 

and  reserved  all  power  to  wealth  and  the  feudal  proprie- 
taries ;  Penn  believed  that  God  is  in  every  conscience,  his 
light  in  every  soul;  and  therefore  he  built  —  such  are  his 
own  words  —  "a  free  colony  for  all  mankind."  This  is  the 
praise  of  William  Penn,  that,  in  an  age  which  had  seen  a 
popular  revolution  shipwreck  popular  liberty  among  selfish 
factions,  which  had  seen  Hugh  Peter  and  Henry  Yane 
perish  by  the  hangman's  cord  and  the  axe  ;  in  an  age  when 
Sydney  nourished  the  pride  of  patriotism  rather  than  the 
sentiment  of  philanthropy,  when  Russell  stood  for  the 
liberties  of  his  order,  and  not  for  new  enfranchisements, 
when  Harrington  and  Shaftesbury  and  Locke  thought  gov- 
ernment should  rest  on  property, — Penn  did  not  despair 
of  humanity,  and,  though  all  history  and  experience  denied 
the  sovereignty  of  the  people,  dared  to  cherish  the  noble 
idea  of  man's  capacity  for  self-government.  Conscious  that 
there  was  no  room  for  its  exercise  in  England,  the  pure 
enthusiast,  like  Calvin  and  Descartes,  a  voluntary  exile,  was 
come  to  the  banks  of  the  Delaware  to  institute  "  the  Holy 

EXPERIMEXT." 

The  news  spread  rapidly  that  the  Quaker  king  was 
at  Newcastle ;  and,  on  the  day  after  his  landing,  in  Oct.* 
presence  of  a  crowd  of  Swedes  and  Dutch  and  Eng- 
lish, who  had  gathered  round  the  court-house,  his  deeds 
of  feoffment  were  produced ;  the  Duke  of  York's  agent 
surrendered  the  territory  by  the  solemn  delivery  of  earth 
and  water,  and  Penn,  invested  with  supreme  and  undefined 
power  in  Delaware,  addressed  the  assembled  multitude  on 
government,  recommended  sobriety  and  peace,  and  pledged 
himself  to  grant  liberty  of  conscience  and  civil  freedom. 

From  Newcastle,  Penn  ascended  the  Delaware  to  Chester, 
where  he  was  hospitably  received  by  the  honest,  kind-hearted 
emigrants  who  had  preceded  him  from  the  north  of  England ; 
the  village  of  herdsmen  and  farmers,  with  their  plain  man- 
ners, gentle  dispositions,  and  tranquil  passions,  seemed  a 
harbinger  of  a  golden  age. 

From  Chester,  tradition  describes  the  journey  of  Penn  to 
have  been  continued  with  a  few  friends  in  an  open  boat,  in 
the  earliest  days  of  November,  to  the  beautiful  bank,  fringed 


122  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIV. 

with  pine-trees,  on  which  the  city  of  Philadelphia  was  soon 
to  rise. 

1682.  In  the  following  weeks,  Penn  visited  West  and 

PgJ;       East  New  Jersey,  New  York,  the  metropolis  of  his 

neighbor  proprietary,  the  Duke  of  York,  and,  after 
J^l       meeting  Friends  on  Long  Island,  he  returned  to  the 

banks  of  the  Delaware. 
To  this  period  belongs  his  first  grand  treaty  with  the 
Indians.  Beneath  a  large  elm-tree  at  Shakamaxon,  on  the 
northern  edge  of  Philadelphia,  William  Penn,  surrounded 
by  a  few  friends,  in  the  habiliments  of  peace,  met  the 
numerous  delegation  of  the  Lenni-Lenape  tribes.  The  great 
treaty  was  not  for  the  purchase  of  lands,  but,  confirming 
what  Penn  had  written  and  Markham  covenanted,  its  sub- 
lime purpose  was  the  recognition  of  the  equal  rights  of 
humanity.  Under  the  shelter  of  the  forest,  now  leafless  by 
the  frosts  of  autumn,  Penn  proclaimed  to  the  men  of  the 
Algonkin  race,  from  both  banks  of  the  Delaware,  from  the 
borders  of  the  Schuylkill,  and,  it  may  have  been,  even  from 
the  Susquehannah,  the  same  simple  message  of  j)eace  and 
love  which  George  Fox  had  professed  before  Cromwell  and 
•Mary  Fisher  had  borne  to  the  Grand  Turk.  The  English 
and  the  Indian  should  respect  the  same  moral  law,  should 
be  alike  secure  in  their  pursuits  and  their  possessions,  and 
adjust  every  difference  by  a  peaceful  tribunal,  composed  of 
an  equal  number  of  men  from  each  race. 

"  We  meet,"  such  were  the  words  of  William  Penn, 

1682. 

Nov!  "  on  the  broad  pathway  of  good  faith  and  good-will ; 
no  advantage  shall  be  taken  on  either  side,  but  all 
shall  be  openness  and  love.  I  will  not  call  you  children ; 
for  parents  sometimes  chide  their  children  too  severely : 
nor  brothers  only;  for  brothers  differ.  The  friendship 
between  me  and  you  I  will  not  compare  to  a  chain ;  for 
that  the  rains  might  rust,  or  the  falling  tree  might  break. 
We  are  the  same  as  if  one  man's  body  were  to  be  divided 
into  two  parts ;  we  are  all  one  flesh  and  blood." 

The  children  of  the  forest  were  touched  by  the  sacred 
doctrine,  and  renounced  their  guile  and  their  revenge. 
They  received  the  presents  of  Penn  in  sincerity ;  and  with 


1683.  PENNSYLVANIA.  123 

hearty  friendship  they  gave  the  belt  of  wampum.  "  We 
will  live,"  said  they,  "  in  love  with  William  Penn  and  his 
children,  as  long  as  the  moon  and  the  sun  shall  endure." 

This  agreement  of  peace  and  friendship  was  made  under 
the  open  sky,  by  the  side  of  the  Delaware,  with  the  sun  and 
the  river  and  the  forest  for  witnesses.  It  was  not  confirmed 
by  an  oath ;  it  was  not  ratified  by  signatures  and  seals ;  no 
record  of  the  conference  can  be  found ;  and  its  terms  and 
conditions  had  no  abiding  inscription  but  on  the  heart. 
There  they  were  written  like  the  law  of  God.  The  simple 
sons  of  the  wilderness,  returning  to  their  wigwams,  kept 
the  history  of  the  covenant  by  strings  of  wampum,  and, 
long  afterwards,  in  their  cabins,  would  count  over  the  shells 
on  a  clean  piece  of  bark,  and  recall  to  their  own  memory, 
and  repeat  to  their  children  or  to  the  stranger,  the  words  of 
William  Penn.  New  England  had  just  terminated  a  dis- 
astrous war  of  extermination;  the  Dutch  were  scarcely 
ever  at  peace  with  the  Algonkins ;  the  laws  of  Maryland 
refer  to  Indian  hostilities  and  massacres,  which  ex- 
tended as  far  as  Richmond.  Penn  came  without  1682. 
arms ;  he  declared  his  purpose  to  abstain  from  vio- 
lence ;  he  had  no  message  but  peace ;  and  not  a  drop  of 
Quaker  blood  was  shed  in  his  time  by  an  Indian. 

Was  there  not  progress  from  Melendez  to  Roger  Wil- 
liams ?  from  Cortez  and  Pizarro  to  William  Penn  ?  The 
Quakers,  ignorant  of  the  homage  which  their  virtues  would 
receive  from  Voltaire  and  Raynal,  men  so  unlike  themselves, 
exulted  in  the  consciousness  of  their  humanity.  We  have 
done  better,  said  they  truly,  "than  if,  with  the  proud 
Spaniards,  we  had  gained  the  mines  of  Potosi.  We  may 
make  the  ambitious  heroes,  whom  the  world  admires,  blush 
for  their  shameful  victories.  To  the  poor,  dark  souls  round 
about  us  we  teach  their  rights  as  men." 

In  the  following  year,  Penn  often  met  the  Indians  1683. 
in  council  and  at  their  festivals.  He  visited  them  in 
their  cabins,  shared  the  hospitable  banquet  of  hominy  and 
roasted  acorns,  and  laughed  and  frolicked  and  practised 
athletic  games  with  the  confiding  red  men.  He  spoke  with 
them  of  religion,  and  found  that  the  tawny  skin  did  not  ex- 


124  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIV. 

elude  the  instinct  of  a  Deity.  "  The  poor  savage  people 
believed  in  God  and  the  soul  without  the  aid  of  meta- 
physics." 

Peace  existed  with  the  natives ;  the  contentment  of  the 
emigrants  was  made  perfect  by  the  happy  inaugura- 
Dec.^4-7.  ^^^^  ^^  ^h^  government.  A  general  convention  had 
been  permitted  by  Penn :  the  people  preferred  to 
appear  by  their  representatives  ;  and  in  three  days  the 
work  of  preparatory  legislation  at  Chester  was  finished. 
The  charter  from  the  king  did  not  include  the  territories ; 
these  were  now  enfranchised  by  the  joint  act  of  the  inhabi- 
tants and  the  proprietary,  and  united  with  Pennsylvania  on 
the  basis  of  equal  rights.  The  freedom  of  all  being  thus 
confirmed,  the  Inward  Voice,  which  was  the  celestial  visitant 
to  the  Quakers,  dictated  a  code.  God  was  declared  the 
only  Lord  of  conscience ;  the  first  day  of  the  week  was 
reserved  as  a  day  of  leisure,  for  the  ease  of  the  creation. 
The  rule  of  equality  was  introduced  into  families  by  ab- 
rogating the  privileges  of  primogeniture.  The  word  of 
an  honest  man  was  evidence  without  an  oath.  The  mad 
spirit  of  speculation  was  checked  by  a  system  of  strict 
accountability,  applied  to  factors  and  agents.  Every  resi- 
dent who  paid  scot  and  lot  to  the  governor  possessed 
the  right  of  suffrage ;  and,  without  regard  to  sect,  every 
Christian  was  eligible  to  office.  No  tax  or  custom  could  be 
levied  but  by  law.  The  Quaker  is  a  spiritualist ;  the  pleas- 
ures of  the  senses,  masks,  revels,  and  stage-plays,  not  less 
than  bull-baits  and  cock-fights,  were  prohibited.  Murder 
was  the  only  crime  punishable  by  death.  Marriage  was 
esteemed  a  civil  contract;  adultery,  a  felony.  The  false 
accuser  was  liable  to  double  damages.  Every  prison  for 
convicts  was  made  a  workhouse.  There  were  neither  poor 
rates  nor  tithes.  The  Swedes  and  Finns  and  Dutch  were 
invested  with  the  liberties  of  Englishmen.  Well  might 
Lawrence  Cook  exclaim  in  their  behalf :  "  It  is  the  best  day 
we  have  ever  seen."  The  work  of  legislation  being  finished, 
the  proprietary  urged  upon  the  house  his  religious  counsel, 
and  the  assembly  was  adjourned. 

The  government  having  been  organized,  William  Penn, 


1683.  PENNSYLVANIA.  125 

accompanied  by  members  of  his  council,  hastened  to  "West 
River,  to  interchange  courtesies  with  Lord  Baltimore, 
and  fix  the  limits  of  their  respective  provinces.  The  Decf  ii. 
adjustment  was  difficult.  Lord  Baltimore  claimed 
by  his  charter  the  whole  country  as  far  as  the  fortieth 
degree.  Penn  replied,  just  as  the  Dutch  and  the  agents  of 
the  Duke  of  York  had  always  urged,  that  the  charter  for 
Maryland  included  only  lands  that  were  still  unoccupied ; 
that  the  banks  of  the  Delaware  had  been  purchased,  appro- 
priated, and  colonized,  before  that  charter  was  written.  For 
more  than  fifty  years,  the  country  had  been  in  the  hands  of 
the  Dutch  and  their  successors ;  and,  during  that  period, 
the  claim  of  Lord  Baltimore  had  always  been  resisted.  The 
answer  of  Penn  was  true,  and  conformed  to  English  law  as 
applied  to  the  colonies.  In  1623,  the  Dutch  had  built  Fort 
Nassau,  in  New  Jersey ;  and  the  soil  of  Delaware  was  pur- 
chased by  Godyn,  and  colonized  by  De  Yries,  before  the 
promise  of  King  Charles  to  Sir  George  Calvert.  But  what 
line  should  be  esteemed  the  limit  of  New  Netherland  ?  This 
remained  a  subject  for  compromise.  A  discussion  of  three 
days  led  to  no  result :  tired  of  useless  debates,  Penn  crossed 
the  Chesapeake  to  visit  Friends  at  Choptank ;  and  returned 
to  his  own  province,  prepared  to  renew  negotiation  or  to 
submit  to  arbitration  in  England. 

The  enthusiasm  of  William  Penn  sustained  him  in  un- 
ceasing exertions.  Purchasing  the  ground  of  the  lesa. 
Swedes,  in  a  situation  "  not  surpassed  "  —  such  are  his  ^nd 
words  —  "  by  one  among  all  the  many  places  he  had  ^e^- 
seen  in  the  world,"  on  a  neck  of  land  between  the  Schuyl- 
kill  and  Delaware,  appointed  for  a  town  by  the  convenience 
of  the  rivers,  the  firmness  of  the  land,  the  pure  springs  and 
salubrious  air,  he  laid  out  Philadelphia,  the  city  of  refuge, 
the  mansion  of  freedom.  Pleasant  visions  of  innocence  and 
happiness  floated  before  the  imagination  of  his  Quaker 
brethren.  "  Here,"  said  they,  "  we  may  worship  God  ac- 
cording to  the  dictates  of  the  Divine  Principle,  free  from 
the  mouldy  errors  of  tradition  ;  here  we  may  thrive,  in  peace 
and  retirement,  in  the  lap  of  unadulterated  nature  ;  here  we 
may  improve  an  innocent  course  of  life  on  a  virgin  Elysian 


126 


COLONIAL  HISTOEY.  Chap.  XXIV. 


shore."  But  vast  as  were  the  hopes  of  the  humble  Friends, 
who  now  marked  the  boundaries  of  streets  on  the  chestnut 
or  ash  and  walnut  trees  of  the  original  forest,  they  were 
surpassed  by  the  reality.  Pennsylvania  bound  the  northern 
and  the  southern  colonies  in  bonds  stronger  than  paper 
chains ;  Philadelphia  was  the  birthplace  of  American  inde- 
pendence and  the  pledge  of  union. 

1683.  In  March,  the  infant  city,  in  which  there  could 
Mar.  12.  j^^ve  been  few  mansions  but  hollow  trees,  was  already 
the  scene  of  legislation.  From  each  of  the  six  counties  into 
which  Penn's  dominions  were  divided,  nine  representatives, 
Swedes,  Dutch,  and  English,  were  elected  for  the  purpose  of 
establishing  a  charter  of  liberties.  They  desired  it  might  be 
the  acknowledged  growth  of  the  New  World,  and  bear  date 
in  Philadelphia.  "  To  the  people  of  this  place,"  said  Penn, 
"  I  am  not  like  a  selfish  man ;  through  my  travail  and  pains 
the  province  came  ;  it  is  now  in  Friends'  hands.  Our  faith  is 
for  one  another,  that  God  will  be  our  counsellor  for  ever." 
And,  when  the  general  assembly  came  together,  he  referred 
to  the  frame  of  government  proposed  in  England,  saying : 
"  You  may  amend,  alter,  or  add ;  I  am  ready  to  settle  such 
foundations  as  may  be  for  your  happiness." 

The  constitution  which  was  established  created  a  legisla- 
tive council  and  a  more  numerous  assembly ;  the  former  to 
be  elected  for  three  years,  one  third  being  renewed 
March,  annually ;  the  assembly  to  be  annually  chosen.  Rota- 
tion in  office  was  enjoined.  The  theory  of  the  consti- 
tution gave  to  the  governor  and  council  the  initiation  of  all 
laws ;  these  were  to  be  promulgated  to  the  people ;  and  the 
office  of  the  assembly  was  designed  to  be  no  more  than  to 
report  the  decision  of  the  people  in  their  primary  meetings. 
Thus  no  law  could  be  enacted  but  with  the  direct  assent  of 
the  whole  community.  Such  was  the  system  of  the  charter  of 
liberties.  But  it  received  modifications  from  the  legislature 
by  which  it  was  established.  The  assembly  set  the  precedent 
of  engaging  in  debate,  and  of  proposing  subjects  for  bills 
by  way  of  conference  with  the  governor  and  council.  In 
return,  by  unanimous  vote,  a  negative  voice  was  allowed  the 
governor  on  all  the  doings  of  the  council,  and  such  a  power 


1710.  PENNSYLVANIA.       *  127 

was  virtually  a  right  to  negative  any  law.  It  would  have 
been  more  simple  to  have  left  the  assembly  full  power  to 
originate  bills,  and  to  the  governor  an  unconditional  nega- 
tive. This  was  virtually  the  method  established  in  1683 ; 
it  was  distinctly  recognised  in  the  fundamental  law  in  1696. 
Besides,  the  charter  from  Charles  II.  held  the  proprietary 
responsible  for  colonial  legislation  ;  and  no  act  of  provincial 
legislation  could  be  perfected  till  it  had  passed  the  great 
seal  of  the  province.  That  a  negative  voice  was  thus 
reserved  to  William  Penn  was,  I  believe,  the  opinion  of  the 
colonists  of  that  day ;  such  was  certainly  the  intention  of 
the  royal  charter.  In  other  respects,  the  frame  of  govern- 
ment gave  all  power  to  the  people ;  the  judges  were  to  be 
nominated  by  the  provincial  council,  and,  in  case  of  good 
behavior,  could  not  be  removed  by  the  proprietary  during 
the  term  for  which  they  were  commissioned.  But,  for  the 
hereditary  office  of  proprietary,  Pennsylvania  would  have 
been  a  representative  democracy.  In  Maryland,  the  council 
was  named  by  Lord  Baltimore ;  in  Pennsylvania,  by  the 
people.  In  Maryland,  the  power  of  appointing  magistrates, 
and  all,  even  the  subordinate  executive  officers,  rested  solely 
with  the  proprietary ;  in  Pennsylvania,  William  Penn  could 
not  appoint  a  justice  or  a  constable ;  every  executive  offi- 
cer, except  the  highest,  was  elected  by  the  people  or  their 
representatives  ;  and  the  governor  could  perform  no  public 
act  but  with  the  consent  of  the  council.  Lord  Baltimore 
had  a  revenue  derived  from  the  export  of  tobacco,  the 
staple  of  Maryland;  and  his  colony  was  burdened  with 
taxes  :  a  similar  revenue  was  offered  to  William  Penn,  and 
declined. 

In  the  name  of  all  the  freemen  of  the  province,  the 
charter  was  received  by  the  assembly  with  gratitude,  as 
one  "of  more  than  expected  liberty."  "I  desired,"  says 
Penn,  "  to  show  men  as  free  and  as  happy  as  they  can  be." 
In  the  decline  of  life,  the  language  of  his  heart  was 
still  the  same.  "  If,  in  the  relation  between  us,"  he  1710. 
writes  in  his  old  age,  "  the  people  want  of  me  any 
thing  that  would  make  them  happier,  I  should  readily 
grant  it." 


128  •  COLONIAL  niSTOEY.  Chap.  XXIV. 

When  Peter,  the  great  Russian  reformer,  attended  in 
England  a  meeting  of  Quakers,  the  semi-barbarous  philan- 
thropist could  not  but  exclaim :  "  How  happy  must  be  a 
community  instituted  on  their  principles  ! "  "  Beautiful !  " 
said  Frederic  of  Prussia,  when,  a  hundred  years  later,  he 
read  the  account  of  the  government  of  Pennsylvania ;  "  it 
is  perfect,  if  it  can  endure."  To  the  charter  which  Locke 
invented  for  Carolina,  the  palatines  voted  an  immutable 
immortality ;  and  it  never  gained  more  than  a  short,  partial 
existence  :  to  the  people  of  his  province  Penn  left  it  free 
to  subvert  or  alter  the  frame  of  government ;  and  its  essential 
principles  remain  to  this  day  without  change. 

Such  was  the  birth  of  popular  power  in  Pennsylvania  and 
Delaware.  It  remained  to  dislodge  superstition  from  its 
hiding-places  in  the  mind.  The  Scandinavian  emigrants 
came  from  their  native  forests  with  imaginations  clouded 
by  the  gloomy  terrors  of  an  invisible  world  of  fiends  ;  and 
a  turbulent  woman  was  brought  to  trial  as  a  witch. 
Fetf*27.  P^^J^  presided,  and  the  Quakers  on  the  jury  out- 
numbered the  Swedes.  The  grounds  of  the  accusa- 
tion were  canvassed ;  the  witnesses  calmly  examined ;  and 
the  jury,  having  listened  to  the  charge  from  the  governor, 
returned  this  verdict :  "  The  prisoner  is  guilty  of  the 
common  fame  of  being  a  witch,  but  not  guilty  as  she  stands 
indicted."  The  friends  of  the  liberated  prisoner  were 
required  to  give  bonds  that  she  should  keep  the  peace  ; 
and  in  Penn's  domain,  from  that  day  to  this,  neither  demon 
nor  hag  ever  rode  through  the  air  on  goat  or  broomstick ; 
and  the  worst  arts  of  conjuration  went  no  further  than  to 
foretell  fortunes,  mutter  spells  over  quack  medicines,  or 
discover  by  the  divining-rod  the  hidden  treasures  of  buc- 
caneers. 

1683  to  Meantime,  the  news  spread  abroad  that  William 
1688.  Penn,  the  Quaker,  had  opened  "an  asylum  to  the 
good  and  the  oppressed  of  every  nation ; "  and  humanity 
went  through  Europe,  gathering  the  children  of  misfortune. 
From  England  and  Wales,  from  Scotland  and  Ireland  and 
the  Low  Countries,  emigrants  crowded  to  the  land  of 
promise.     On  the  banks  of   the  Rhine,  it  was  whispered 


1684.  PENNSYLVANIA.  129 

that  the  plans  of  Gustavus  Adolphus  and  Oxenstiern  were 
consummated;  new  companies  were  formed  under  better 
auspices  than  those  of  the  Swedes ;  and,  from  the  highlands 
above  Worms,  the  humble  people,  who  had  melted  at  the 
eloquence  of  Penn,  renounced  their  German  homes  for  the 
protection  of  the  Quaker  king.  There  had  been  nothing  in 
the  history  of  the  human  race  like  the  confidence  which  his 
simple  virtues  and  institutions  inspired.  In  August,  1683, 
"  Philadelphia  consisted  of  three  or  four  little  cottages  ; " 
the  conies  were  yet  undisturbed  in  their  hereditary  bur- 
rows; the  deer  fearlessly  bounded  past  blazed  trees,  un- 
conscious of  foreboded  streets  ;  the  stranger  that  wandered 
from  the  river  bank  was  lost  in  the  thickets  of  the  inter- 
minable forest ;  and,  two  years  afterwards,  the  place  con- 
tained about  six  hundred  houses,  and  the  schoolmaster  and 
the  printing-press  had  begun  their  work.  In  three  years 
from  its  foundation,  Philadelphia  gained  more  than  New 
York  had  done  in  half  a  century.  This  was  the  happiest 
season  in  the  public  life  of  William  Penn.  "  I  must,  with- 
out vanity,  say,"  such  was  his  honest  self-gratulation, 
"  I  have  led  the  greatest  colony  into  America  that  Ma?\ 
ever  any  man  did  upon  a  private  credit,  and  the 
most  prosperous  beginnings  that  ever  were  in  it  are  to 
be  found  among  us." 

The  government  had  been  organized,  peace  with  the 
natives  confirmed,  the  fundamental  law  established,  the 
courts  of  justice  instituted ;  the  mission  of  William  Penn 
was  accomplished  ;  and  now,  like  Solon,  the  most  humane 
of  ancient  legislators,  he  prepared  to  leave  the  common- 
wealth, of  which  he  had  founded  the  well-being.  Intrusting 
the  great  seal  to  his  friend  Lloyd,  and  the  executive  power 
to  a  committee  of  the  council,  Penn  sailed  for  England, 
leaving  freedom  to  its  own  development.  The  province 
already  contained  eight  thousand  souls.  His  de- 
parture was  favorable  to  the  colony  and  to  his  own  Aug.  la, 
tranquillity.  He  had  established  a  democracy,  and 
was  himself  a  feudal  sovereign.  The  two  elements  in  the 
government  were  incompatible ;  and  for  ninety  years  the 
civil  history  of  Pennsylvania  is  but  the  account  of  the  jarring 

VOL.  II.  9 


130  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIV. 

of  these  opposing  interests,  to  which  there  could  be  no  happy 
issue  but  in  popular  independence.  But  rude  collisions 
were  not  yet  begun  ;  and  the  benevolence  of  William  Penn 
breathed  to  his  people  a  farewell,  unclouded  by  apprehension. 
"  My  love  and  my  life  are  to  you  and  with  you,  and  no 
water  can  quench  it,  nor  distance  bring  it  to  an  end.  I 
have  been  with  you,  cared  over  you,  and  served  you  with 
unfeigned  love  ;  and  you  are  beloved  of  me  and  dear  to  me 
beyond  utterance.  I  bless  you  in  the  name  and  power  of 
the  Lord,  and  may  God  bless  you  with  his  righteousness, 
peace,  and  plenty,  all  the  land  over."  "  You  are  come  to  a 
quiet  land,  and  liberty  and  authority  are  in  your  hands. 
Rule  for  him  under  whom  the  princes  of  this  world  will  one 
day  esteem  it  their  honor  to  govern  in  their  places."  "  And 
thou,  Philadelphia,  the  virgin  settlement  of  this  province, 
my  soul  prays  to  God  for  thee,  that  thou  mayest  stand  in 
the  day  of  trial,  and  that  thy  children  may  be  blessed." 
"  Dear  friends,  my  love  salutes  you  all."  And,  after 
Oct.\  -^^  reached  England,  he  assured  eager  inquirers  that 
"  things  went  on  sweetly  with  Friends  in  Pennsyl- 
vania; that  they  increased  finely  in  outward  things  and  in 
wisdom." 

The   question   respecting    the  boundaries    between    the 
domains  of   Lord  Baltimore  and  of  William  Penn 
Dec.  9.    was  promptly  resumed  before  the  committee  of  trade 
and  plantations ;   and,  after  many  hearings,  it  was 
decided  that  the  tract  of  Delaware  did  not  constitute 
Oct^iV.    ^  P^^*  ^^  Maryland.     The  proper  boundaries  of  the 
territory  remained  to  be  settled;    and   the   present 
Nov.  7.    limits  of   Delaware  were  established  by  a  compro- 
mise.    There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  any  undue  bias 
,on  the   minds   of   the  committee ;   had  a  wrong  been  sus- 
pected, the  decision  would  have  been  reversed  at  the  Revo- 
lution of  1688. 

This  decision  formed  the  basis  of  an  agreement  between 
the  respective  heirs  of  the  two  proprietaries  in  1732.  Three 
years  afterwards,  the  subject  became  a  question  in  chancery ; 
in  1750,  the  present  boundaries  were  decreed  by  Lord  Hard- 
wicke;    ten   years   later,  they   were,  by  agreement,  more 


1686.  PENNSYLVANIA.  131 

accurately  defined;  and,  in  1761,  commissioners  began  to 
designate  the  limit  of  Maryland  on  the  side  of  Pennsylvania 
and  Delaware.  In  1763,  Charles  Mason  and  Jeremiah 
Dixon,  two  mathematicians  or  surveyors,  were  engaged  to 
mark  the  lines.  In  1764,  they  entered  upon  their  task, 
with  good  instruments  and  a  corps  of  axemen ;  by  the 
middle  of  June,  1765,  they  had  traced  the  parallel  of  lati- 
tude to  the  Susquehannah  ;  a  year  later,  they  climbed  the 
Little  Alleghany ;  in  1767,  they  carried  forward  their  work, 
under  an  escort  from  the  Six  Nations,  to  an  Indian  war- 
path, two  hundred  and  forty-four  miles  from  the  Delaware 
River.  Other  hands,  at  a  later  day,  continued  Mason  and 
Dixon's  line  to  the  west,  as  the  southern  boundary  of 
Pennsylvania. 

But  the  care  of  colonial  property  did  not  absorb  the 
enthusiasm  of  Penn ;  and,  now  that  his  father's  friend 
had  succeeded  to  the  throne,  he  employed  his  fortune,  his 
influence,  and  his  fame  to  secure  that  "  impartial  "  liberty 
of  conscience  which,  for  nearly  twenty  years,  he  had  ad- 
vocated before  the  magistrates  of  Ireland,  and  English 
juries,  in  the  Tower,  in  Newgate,  before  the  commons  of 
England,  in  public  discussions  with  Baxter  and  the  Pres- 
byterians, before  Quaker  meetings,  at  Chester  and  Phila- 
delphia, and  through  the  press  to  the  world.  It  was  his 
old  post,  the  oflice  to  which  he  was  faithful  from  youth 
to  age.  Fifteen  thousand  families  had  been  ruined  for 
dissent  since  the  restoration ;  five  thousand  persons  had 
died  victims  to  imprisonment.  The  monarch  was  persuaded 
to  exercise  his  prerogative  of  mercy ;  and,  at  Penn's 
intercession,  not  less  than  twelve  hundred  Friends  i686. 
were  liberated  from  the  horrible  dungeons  and  prisons 
where  many  of  them  had  languished  hopelessly  for  years. 
Penn  delighted  in  doing  good.  His  house  was  thronged 
by  swarms  of  clients,  envoys  from  Massachusetts  among  the 
number ;  and  sometimes  there  were  two  hundred  at  once, 
claiming  his  disinterested  good  offices  with  the  king.  For 
Locke,  then  a  voluntary  exile,  he  obtained  a  promise  of  im- 
munity, which  the  blameless  philosopher,  in  the  just  pride  of 
innocence,  refused.     And  at  the  very  time  when  the  Koman 


132  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIV. 

Catholic  Fenelon,  in  France,  was  pleading  for  Protestants 
iagainst  the  intolerance  of  Louis  XIV.,  the  Protestant 
Penn,  in  England,  was  laboring  for  the  equal  rights  of  the 
Roman  Catholics.  Claiming  for  the  executive  of  the  country 
the  prerogative  of  employing  every  person,  "  according  to 
his  ability,  and  not  according  to  his  opinion,"  he  labored 
to  effect  a  repeal  of  every  disfranchisement  for  opinion. 
Ever  ready  to  deepen  the  vestiges  of  British  freedom,  and 
vindicate  the  right  of  "  the  free  Saxon  people  to  be  governed 
by  laws  of  which  they  themselves  were  the  makers,"  his 
whole  soul  was  bent  on  effecting  this  end  by  means  of 
parliament  during  the  reign  of  James  II.,  well  knowing  that 
the  Prince  of  Orange  was  pledged  to  a  less  liberal  policy. 
The  political  tracts  of  "the  arch  Quaker"  in  behalf  of 
liberty  of  conscience  connect  the  immutable  principles  of 
human  nature  and  human  rights  with  the  character  and 
origin  of  English  freedom,  and  exhaust  the  question  as  a 
subject  for  English  legislation.  He  resisted  the  violent  trans- 
fer of  Magdalen  College  to  the  Catholics,  and  desired  that 
the  universities  might  not  be  shut  against  them  and  other  dis- 
senters. No  man  in  England  was  more  opposed  to  Roman 
Catholic  dominion  ;  but,  like  an  honest  lover  of  truth,  and 
well  aware  that  he  and  George  Fox  could  win  more  converts 
than  James  II.  and  the  pope  with  all  their  patronage,  he 
desired,  in  the  controversy  with  the  Roman  church,  nothing 
but  equality.  He  knew  that  popery  was  in  England  the 
party  of  the  past,  from  causes  that  lay  in  the  heart  of 
society,  incapable  of  restoration  ;  and  therefore  he  ridiculed 
the  popish  panic  as  a  scarecrow  fit  only  to  frighten  children. 
Such  was  the  strong  antipathy  of  England  to  the  Roman 
see,  he  foretold  the  sure  success  of  the  English  church,  if  it 
should  plough  with  that  heifer,  but  equally  predicted  the 
still  later  result,  that  the  Catholics,  in  their  turn  becoming 
champions  of  civil  freedom,  would  unite  with  its  other 
advocates,  and  impair  and  subvert  the  English  hierarchy. 
Penn  never  gave  counsel  at  variance  with  popular  rights. 
He  resisted  the  commitment  of  the  bishops  to  the  Tower, 
and,  on  the  day  of  the  birth  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  pressed 
the  king  exceedingly  to  open  their  prison-doors.     His  private 


Chap.  XXIV.  PENNSYLVANIA.  133 

correspondence  proves  that  he  esteemed  parliament  the  only- 
power  through  which  his  end  could  be  gained ;  and,  in  the 
true  spirit  of  liberty,  he  sought  to  infuse  his  principles 
into  the  public  mind,  that  so  they  might  find  their  place 
in  the  statute-book  through  the  convictions  of  his  country- 
men. England  to-day  confesses  his  sagacity,  and  is  doing 
honor  to  his  genius.  He  came  too  soon  for  success,  and  he 
was  aware  of  it.  After  more  than  a  century,  the  laws 
which  he  reproved  began  gradually  to  be  repealed ;  and 
the  principle  which  he  developed  is  slowly  but  firmly  as- 
serting its  power  over  the  legislation  of  Great  Britain. 

The  political  connections  of  William  Penn  have  involved 
him  in  the  obloquy  which  followed  the  overthrow  of  the 
Stuarts ;  and  the  friends  to  the  tests,  comprising  nearly  all 
the  members  of  both  the  political  parties,  into  which  Eng- 
land was  soon  divided,  have  generally  been  unfriendly  to 
his  good  name.  But  ^their  malice  has  been  without  perma- 
nent effect.  There  are  not  wanting  those  who  believe  the 
many  to  be  the  most  competent  judge  of  the  beautiful ; 
every  Quaker  believes  them  the  best  arbiter  of  the  just  and 
the  true.  It  is  certain  that  they,  and  they  only,  are  the 
dispensers  of  glory.  Their  final  award  is  given  freely,  and 
cannot  be  shaken.  Every  charge  of  hypocrisy,  of  selfish- 
ness, of  vanity,  of  dissimulation,  of  credulous  confidence ; 
every  form  of  reproach,  from  virulent  abuse  to  cold  apol- 
ogy; every  ill-meant  word  from  tory  and  Jesuit  to  blas- 
phemer and  infidel,  —  has  been  used  against  Penn  ;  but  the 
candor  of  his  character  has  always  triumphed  over  calumny. 
His  name  was  safely  cherished  as  a  household  word  in  the 
cottages  of  Wales  and  Ireland  and  among  the  peasantry  of 
Germany ;  and  not  a  tenant  of  a  wigwam  from  the  sea  to 
the  Susquehannah  doubted  his  integrity.  His  fame  is  now 
wide  as  the  world ;  he  is  one  of  the  few  who  have  gained 
abiding  glory. 

Was  he  prospered  ?  Before  engaging  in  his  American 
enterprise,  he  had  impaired  his  patrimony  to  relieve  the  suf- 
fering Quakers ;  his  zeal  for  his  provinces  hurried  him  into 
colonial  expenses  beyond  the  returns,  and  left  him  without 
a  revenue ;  and  he,  who  had  so  often  been  imprisoned  for 


184  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIV. 

religion,  in  his  old  age  went  to  jail  for  debt.  But  yet 
William  Penn  was  happy.  "  He  could  say  it  before  the 
Lord,  he  had  the  comfort  of  having  approved  himself  a 
faithful  steward  to  his  understanding  and  ability." 

Meanwhile,  the  Quaker  legislators  in  the  woods  of  Penn- 
sylvania were  serving  their  novitiate  in  popular  legislation. 
To   complain,  to  impeach,  to   institute   committees  of   in- 
quiry, to  send  for  persons  and  papers,  to  quarrel  with  the 
executive,  —  all  was  attempted,  and  all  without  permanent 
harm.     But  the  character  of  parties  was  already  evident ; 
and  that  of  the  people  tended  towards  diminishing  the  little 
remaining  authority  of  their  feudal  sovereign.     Penn  had 
reserved  large  tracts  of  territory  as  his  private  property  ; 
he  alone  could  purchase  the  soil  from  the  natives  ;  and  he 
reserved  quit-rents  on  the  lands  which  he  sold.     Pennsyl- 
vania, for  nearly  a  century,  sought  to  impair  the  exclusive 
right  to  pre-emption,  and  to  compel  an  appropriation  of  the 
income  from  quit-rents,  in  part  at  least,  to  the  public  ser- 
vice.    Jealousy  of  a  feudal  chief  was  early  displayed. 
jaiL^    '^^^  maker  of  the  first  Pennsylvania  almanac  was 
censured  for  publishing  Penn  as  a  lord.     The  assem- 
1685.       bly  originated  bills  without  scruple ;  they  attempted 
a  new  organization  of  the  judiciary;  they  alarmed 
the  merchants  by  their  lenity  towards  debtors ;  they 
Mar.^i5.  would  vote  no  taxes ;  they  claimed  the  right  of  in- 
specting the  records,  and  displacing  the  officers  of  the 
courts;    they  expelled  a  member  who  reminded  them  of 
their  contravening  the  provisions  of  their  charter.      The 
executive   power  was  imperfectly   administered;    for   the 
council  was  too  numerous  a  body  for  its  regular  exer- 
FetK^i.    ^^^^'      ^  commission  of  five  was  substituted;    and 
1688.       finally,  when  it  was  resolved  to  appoint  a  deputy 
governor,   the    choice   of    the   proprietary   was   not 
wisely  made.     In  a  word,  folly  and  passion,  not  less  than 
justice  and  wisdom,  had  become  enfranchised  on  the  Dela- 
ware, and  were  desperately  bent  on  the  exercise  of  their 
privileges.      Free  scope  was  opened  to  every  whim  that 
enthusiasts   might   propose    as   oracles  from   the   skies,  to 
every  selfish  desire  that  could  lurk  under  the  Quaker  garb. 


1688.  PENNSYLVANIA.  135 

But  prosperity  rose  over  the  clouds  of  discontent,  and  the 
passions  of  the  young  apprentices  at  legislation  died  away 
at  the  adjournments. 

Peace  also  was  uninterrupted.  Once,  indeed,  it  was 
rumored  that  on  the  Brandywine  five  hundred  Indians 
were  assembled  to  concert  a  massacre.  Immediately  Caleb 
Pusey,  with  five  Friends,  hastened- unarmed  to  the  scene  of 
anticipated  danger.  The  sachem  repelled  the  report  with 
indignation  ;  and  the  griefs  of  the  tribe  were  canvassed  and 
assuaged.  "  The  great  God,  who  made  all  mankind,  ex- 
tends his  love  to  Indians  and  English.  The  rain  and  the 
dews  fall  alike  on  the  ground  of  both ;  the  sun  shines  on  us 
equally ;  and  we  ought  to  love  one  another."  Such  was 
the  diplomacy  of  the  Quaker  envoy.  The  king  of  the  Dela- 
wares  answered :  "  What  you  say  is  true.  Go  home,  and 
harvest  the  corn  God  has  given  you.  We  intend  you  no 
harm." 

The  white  man  agreed  with  the  red  man  to  love  one 
another.  William  Penn  employed  blacks  without  scruple. 
The  free  society  of  traders,  which  he  chartered  and  en- 
couraged, in  its  first  public  agreement  relating  to  them,  did 
but  substitute,  after  fourteen  years'  service,  the  severe  con- 
dition of  adscripts  to  the  soil,  for  that  of  slaves.  At  a 
later  day,  he  endeavored  to  secure  to  the  African  mental 
and  moral  culture,  the  rights  and  happiness  of  domestic 
life.  His  efforts  were  not  successful,  and  he  himself  died 
a  slaveholder.  In  his  last  will,  he  directed  his  slaves  to  be 
emancipated ;  but  his  direction  was  not  regarded  by  his 
heirs.  On  the'  subject  of  negro  slavery,  the  German  mind 
was  least  inthralled  by  prejudice,  because  Germany  had 
never  yet  participated  in  the  slave-trade.  The  Swedish 
and  German  colony  of  Gustavus  Adolphus  was  designed  to 
rest  on  free  labor.  If  the  general  meeting  of  the  Quakers 
for  a  season  forebore  a  positive  judgment,  already, 
in  1688,  "the  poor  hearts"  from  Kirchheim,  "the  1688. 
little  handful "  of  German  Friends  from  the  highlands 
above  the  Rhine,  came  to  the  resolution  that  it  was  not 
lawful  for  Christians  to  buy  or  to  keep  negro  slaves. 

This  decision  of  the  German  emigrants  on  negro  slavery 


136  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIV. 

was  taken  during  the  lifetime  of  George  Fox,  who  recog- 
nised no  distinction  of  race.  "  Let  your  light  shine  among 
the  Indians,  the  blacks,  and  the  whites,"  was  his  message  to 
Quakers  on  the  Delaware.  His  heart  was  with  the  settle- 
ments of  which  he  had  been  the  pioneer ;  and,  a  few  weeks 
before  his  death,  he  exhorted  Friends  in  America  to  be  the 
light  of  the  world,  the  salt  to  preserve  earth  from  corrup- 
tion. Covetousness,  he  adds,  is  idolatry ;  and  he  bids  them 
beware  of  that  "  idol  for  which  so  many  lose  morality  and 
humanity." 

1691.  On  his  death-bed,  the  venerable  apostle  of  equal- 
Jan.  13.  ^^y  ^^g  \[fiQ^  above  the  fear  of  dying,  and,  esteem- 
ing the  change  hardly  deserving  of  mention,  his  thoughts 
turned  to  the  New  World.  Pennsylvania  and  Delaware 
and  West  New  Jersey,  and  in  some  measure  Rhode  Island 
and  North  Carolina,  were  Quaker  states ;  as  his  spirit, 
awakening  from  its  converse  with  shadows,  escaped  from 
the  exile  of  fallen  humanity,  nearly  his  last  words  were  : 
*'  Mind  poor  Friends  in  America."  His  works  praise  him. 
Neither  time  nor  place  can  dissolve  fellowship  with  his 
spirit.  To  his  name  William  Penn  left  this  short  epitaph  : 
"  Many  sons  have  done  virtuously  in  this  day  ;  but,  dear 
George,  thou  excellest  them  all." 

An  opposite  system  was  developed  in  the  dominions  of 
the  Duke  of  York. 


1675.  NORTHERN  COLONIES  CONSOLIDATED.  137 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

JAMES   II.   CONSOLIDATES    THE    NORTHEEN   COLONIES. 

The  country  which,  after  the  reconquest  of  New  Nether- 
land,  was  again  conveyed  to  the  Duke  of  York,  in- 
cluded the  New  England  frontier  from  the  Kennebec  junl*29. 
to  the  St.  Croix,  extended  continuously  to  Connecti- 
cut River,  and  was  bounded  on  the  south  by  Maryland. 
We  have  now  to  trace  an  attempt  to  consolidate  the  whole 
coast  north  of  the  Delaware. 

The  charter  from  the  king  sanctioned  whatever  ordinances 
the  Duke  of  York  or  his  assigns  might  establish ;  and  in 
regard  to  justice,  revenue,  and  legislation,  Edmund  Andros, 
the  governor,  was  left  responsible  only  to  his  own  con- 
science and  his  employer.  He  was  instructed  to  display  all 
the  humanity  and  gentleness  that  could  consist  with  arbi- 
trary power ;  and  to  use  punishments  not  from  wilful  cru- 
elty, but  as  an  instrument  of  terror.  On  the  last  day  of 
October,  he  received  the  surrender  of  the  colony  from  the 
representatives  of  the  Dutch,  and  renewed  the  absolute 
authority  of  the  proprietary.  The  inhabitants  of  the  east- 
ern part  of  Long  Island  resolved,  in  town-meetings,  to 
adhere  to  Connecticut.  The  charter  certainly  did  not  coun- 
tenance their  decision ;  and,  unwilling  to  be  declared  rebels, 
they  submitted  to  New  York. 

In  the  following  summer,  Andros,  with  armed  ^^^^ 
sloops,  proceeded  to  Connecticut  to  vindicate  his 
jurisdiction  as  far  as  the  river.  On  the  first  alarm,  William 
Leet,  the  aged  deputy  governor,  one  of  the  first  seven  pillars 
of  the  church  of  Guilford,  educated  in  England  as  a  lawyer, 
a  rigid  republican,  hospitable  even  to  regicides,  con- 
vened the  assembly.  A  proclamation  was  unani-  Juiyio. 
mously  voted,  and  forwarded  by  express  to  Bull,  the 


138  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXV. 

captain  of  the  company  on  whose  firmness  the  inde- 
Juiy^ii.  pendence  of  the  little  colony  rested.  It  arrived  just 
as  Andros,  hoisting  the  king's  flag,  demanded  the 
surrender  of  Saybrook  Fort.  Immediately  the  English 
colors  were  raised  within  the  fortress.  Despairing  of  vic- 
tory, Andros  attempted  persuasion.  Having  been  allowed 
to  land  with  his  personal  retinue,  he  assumed  authority,  and 
in  the  king's  name  ordered  the  duke's  patent,  with  his  own 
commission,  to  be  read.  In  the  king's  name,  he  was  com- 
manded to  desist ;  and  Andros  was  overawed  by  the  fish- 
ermen and  farmers  who  formed  the  colonial  troops.  Their 
proclamation  he  spoke  of  as  a  slander,  and  an  ill  requital  for 
his  intended  kindness.  The  Saybrook  militia,  escorting  him 
to  his  boat,  saw  him  sail  for  Long  Island ;  and  Connecticut, 
resenting  the  aggression,  made  a  declaration  of  its  wrongs, 
sealed  it  with  its  seal,  and  transmitted  it  to  the  neighboring 
plantations. 

In  New  York  itself  Andros  was  hardly  more  wel- 
come than  at  Saybrook ;  for  the  obedient  servant  of 
the  Duke  of  York  discouraged  every  mention  of  assemblies, 
and  levied  customs  without  the  consent  of  the  people.  But, 
since  the  Puritans  of  Long  Island  claimed  a  representative 
government  as  an  inalienable  English  birthright,  and  the 
whole  population  opposed  the  ruling  system  as  a  tyranny, 
the  governor,  who  was  personally  free  from  vicious  disposi- 
tions, advised  his  master  to  concede  legislative  franchises. 

The  dull  James  II.,  then  Duke  of  York,  of  a  fair  com- 
plexion and  an  athletic  frame,  was  patient  in  details,  yet 
singularly  blind  to  universal  principles,  plodding  with  slug- 
gish diligence,  but  unable  to  conform  conduct  to  a  general 
rule.  Within  narrow  limits  he  reasoned  correctly ;  but  his 
vision  did  not  extend  far.  Without  sympathy  for  the 
crowd, -he  had  no  discernment  of  character,  and  was  the 
easy  victim  of  duplicity  and  intrigue.  His  loyalty  was  but 
devotion  to  the  prerogative  which  he  hoped  to  inherit. 
Brave  in  the  face  of  expected  dangers,  an  unforeseen  emer- 
gency found  him  pusillanimously  helpless.  He  kept  his 
word  sacredly,  unless  it  involved  complicated  relations, 
which  he  could  scarcely  comprehend.     Spiritual  religion  is 


1677.  NORTHERN  COLONIES  CONSOLIDATED.  139 

an  enfranchising  power,  expanding  and  elevating  the  soul ; 
a  service  of  forms  was  analogous  to  the  understanding  of 
James ;  to  attend  mass,  to  build  chapels,  to  risk  the  king- 
dom for  a  rosary,  —  this  was  within  his  grasp;  he  had  no 
clear  perception  of  religious  truth.  Freedom  of  conscience 
was,  in  that  age,  an  idea  yet  standing  on  the  threshold  of 
the  world,  waiting  to  be  ushered  in  ;  and  none  but  exalted 
minds  —  Roger  Williams  and  Penn,  Yane,  Fox,  and 
Bunyan  — went  forth  to  welcome  it ;  no  glimpse  of  it  1677. 
reached  James,  whose  selfish  policy,  unable  to  gain 
immediate  dominion  for  his  persecuted  priests  and  his  con- 
fessor, begged  at  least  for  toleration.  Debauching  a  woman 
on  promise  of  marriage,  he  next  allowed  her  to  be  traduced 
as  having  yielded  to  frequent  prostitution,  and  then  mar- 
ried her ;  he  was  conscientious,  but  his  moral  sense  was  as 
slow  as  his  understanding.  He  was  not  bloodthirsty ;  but 
to  a  narrow  mind  fear  seems  the  most  powerful  instrument 
of  government,  and  he  propped  his  throne  with  the  block 
and  the  gallows.  A  libertine  without  love,  a  devotee  with- 
out spirituality,  an  advocate  of  toleration  without  a  sense  of 
the  natural  right  to  freedom  of  conscience,  —  in  him  the 
muscular  force  prevailed  over  the  intellectual.  He  floated 
between  the  sensuality  of  indulgence  and  the  sensuality  of 
superstition,  hazarding  heaven  for  an  ugly  mistress,  and,  to 
the  great  delight  of  abbots  and  nuns,  winning  it  back  again 
by  pricking  his  flesh  with  sharp  points  of  iron,  and  eating 
no  meat  on  Saturdays.  Of  the  two  brothers,  the  Duke  of 
Buckingham  said  well,  that  Charles  would  not  and  James 
could  not  see.  James  put  his  whole  character  into 
his  reply  to  Andros,  which  is  as  follows :  — 

"  I  cannot  but  suspect  assemblies  would  be  of  dangerous 
consequence ;  nothing  being  more  known  than  the  aptness 
of  such  bodies  to  assume  to  themselves  many  privileges, 
which  prove  destructive  to,*  or  very  often  disturb,  the  peace 
of  government,  when  they  are  allowed.  Neither  do  I  see 
any  use  for  them.  Things  that  need  redress  may  be  sure  of 
finding  it  at  the  quarter  sessions,  or  by  the  legal  and  ordi- 
nary ways,  or,  lastly,  by  appeals  to  myself.  However,  I 
shall  be.  ready  to  consider  of  any  proposal  you  shall  send." 


140 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXV. 


In  November,  some  months  after  the  province  of  Sagada- 
hock — that  is,  Maine  beyond  the  Kennebec  —  had  been  pro- 
tected by  a  fort  and  a  considerable  garrison,  Andros 
^ll\       hastened  to  England ;  but  he  could  not  give  eyes  to 

1678.  the  duke  ;  and,  on  his  return,  he  was  ordered  to  con- 
tinue the  duties,  which,  at  the  surrender,  had  been 

1679.  established  for  three  years.     In  the  next  year,  the 
revenue  was  a  little  increased.   Meantime,  the  Dutch 

Calvinists  had  been  inflamed  by  an  attempt  to  thwart  the 
discipline  of  the  Dutch  Reformed  Church.  Yet  it  should 
be  added  that  the  taxes  were  hardly  three  per  cent  on  im- 
ports, and  really  insufficient  to  meet  the  expenses  of  the 
colony ;  and  that  the  claim  to  exercise  prerogative  in 
1678.  the  church  was  abandoned.  As  in  the  days  of  Love- 
lace, the  province  was  "a  terrestrial  Canaan.  The 
inhabitants  were  blessed  in  their  basket  and  their  store. 
They  were  free  from  pride ;  and  a  wagon  gave  as  good 
content  as  in  Europe  a  coach,  their  home-made  cloth  as  the 
finest  lawns.  The  doors  of  the  low-roofed  houses,  which 
luxury  never  entered,  stood  wide  open  to  charity  and  to  the 
stranger."  The  Island  of  New  York  may,  in  1678,  have 
contained  not  far  from  three  thousand  inhabitants  ;  in  the 
whole  colony,  there  could  not  have  been  far  from  twenty 
thousand.  Ministers  were  scarce  but  welcome,  and  relig- 
ions many ;  the  poor  were  relieved,  and  beggars  unknown. 
A  thousand  pounds  were  opulence;  the  possessor  of  half 
that  sum  was  rich.  The  exports  were  land  productions  — 
wheat,  lumber,  tobacco  —  and  peltry  from  the  Indians.  In 
the  community,  composed  essentially  of  farmers,  great 
equality  of  condition  prevailed ;  there  were  but  "  few  mer- 
chants," "few  servants,  and  very  few  slaves." 

Prompted  by  an  exalted  instinct,  the  people  demanded 
power  to  govern  themselves.     Discontent  created  a 
1681.       popular  convention;   and  if  the  two   Platts,  Titus, 
Wood,  and  Wicks  of  Huntington,  arbitrarily  sum- 
moned to  New  York,  were  still  more  arbitrarily  thrown  into 
prison,  the  purpose  of  the  yeomanry  remained  unshaken. 

The  government  of  New  York  was  quietly  maintained 
over  the  settlements  south  and  west  of  the  Delaware,  till 


1682.  NORTHERN  COLONIES   CONSOLIDATED.  141 

they  were  granted  to  Penn ;  over  the  Jerseys  Androa 
claimed  a  paramount  authority.  We  have  seen  the  Quakers 
refer  the  contest  for  decision  to  an  English  commission. 

In  East  New  Jersey,  Philip  Carteret  had,  as  the 
deputy  of  Sir  George,  resumed  the  government,  and, 
gaining   popularity   by   postponing   the   payment    of    quit- 
rents,  confirmed  liberty  of  conscience  with   representative 
government.     A  direct  trade  with  England,  unencumbered 
by  customs,  was  encouraged.     The  commerce  of  New  York 
was  endangered  by  the  competition  ;  and,  disregard- 
ing a  second  patent  from  the  Duke  of  York,  Andros   qcI%^ 
claimed  that  the  ships  of  New  Jersey  should  pay 
tribute   at   Manhattan.     After  long   altercations   and   the 
arrest  of  Carteret,  terminated  only  by  the  honest  verdict  of 
a  New  York  jury,  Andros  again  entered  New  Jersey, 
to  intimidate  its  assembly  by  the  royal  patent  to  the  j^^q'2, 
duke.     The  people  of  New  Jersey  could  not,  as  in 
the  happier  Connecticut,  plead  an  earlier  grant  from  the 
king.     But  when  were  Puritans  at  a  loss  for  arguments  in 
favor  of  freedom?     "We  are  the  representatives  of   the 
freeholders  of  this  province : "  such  was  the  answer  of  the 
assembly;   "his   majesty's  patent,  though  under  the  great 
seal,  we  dare  not  grant  to  be  our  rule  or  joint  safety ;  for 
the  great  charter  of  England,  alias  Magna  Charta,  is  the 
only  rule,  privilege,  and  joint   safety  of  every  free-born 
Englishman." 

The  firmness  of  the  legislature  preserved  the  indepen- 
dence of  New  Jersey ;  the  decision  of  Sir  William  Jones  pro- 
tected its  people  against  arbitrary  taxation ;  its  prosperity 
sprung  from  the  miseries  of  Scotland.  The  trustees  of  Sir 
George  Carteret,  tired  of  the  burden  of  colonial  property, 
exposed  their  province  to  sale ;  and  the  unappropriated 
domain,   with    jurisdiction   over  the   five   thousand 

1682 

already  planted  on  the  soil,  was  purchased  by  an  Feb.* 
association  of  twelve  Quakers,  under  the  auspices  of 
William  Penn.  A  brief  account  of  the  province  was  im- 
mediately published ;  and  settlers  were  allured  by  a  reason- 
able eulogy  on  its  healthful  climate  and  safe  harbors,  its 
fisheries  and  abundant  game,  its  forests  and  fertile  soil,  and 


142 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXV. 


the  large  liberties  established  for  the  encouragement 
1682.  of  adventurers.  In  November,  1682,  possession  was 
taken  by  Thomas  Rudyard,  as  temporary  deputy 
governor ;  the  happy  country  was  already  tenanted  by  "  a 
sober,  professing  people."  Meantime,  the  twelve  proprie- 
tors selected  each  a  partner;  and,  in  March,  1683,  to  the 
twenty-four,  among  whom  was  the  timorous,  cruel,  ini- 
quitous Perth,  afterwards  chancellor  of  Scotland,  and  the 
amiable,  learned,  and  ingenious  Barclay,  who  became  nom- 
inally the  governor  of  the  territory,  a  new  and  latest 
u&rhi.  patent  of  East  New  Jersey  was  granted  by  the  Duke 
of  York.  From  Scotland  the  largest  emigration  was 
expected ;  and,  in  1685,  just  before  embarking  for  America 
with  his  own  family  and  about  two  hundred  passengers, 
George  Scot  of  Pitlochie  addressed  to  his  countrymen  an 
argument  in  favor  of  removing  to  a  country  where  there 
was  room  for  a  man  to  flourish  without  wronging  his 
1685.  neighbor.  "  It  is  judged  the  interest  of  the  govern- 
ment "  —  thus  he  wrote,  apparently  with  the  sanction 
of  men  in  power  —  "to  suppress  Presbyterian  principles 
altogether ;  the  whole  force  of  the  law  of  this  kingdom  is 
levelled  at  the  effectual  bearing  them  down.  The  rigorous 
putting  these  laws  in  execution  hath  in  a  great  part  ruined 
many  of  those  who,  notwithstanding  thereof,  find  themselves 
in  conscience  obliged  to  retain  these  principles.  A  retreat, 
where,  by  law,  a  toleration  is  allowed,  doth  at  present  offer 
itself  in  America,  and  is  nowhere  else  to  be  found  in-  his 
majesty's^  dominions." 

This  is  the  era  at  which  East  New  Jersey,  till  now  chiefly 
colonized  from  New  England,  became  the  asylum  of  Scottish 
Presbyterians.  Who  has  not  heard  of  the  ruthless  crimes 
by  which  the  Stuarts  attempted  to  supplant  the  church  of 
Scotland,  and  extirpate  the  faith  of  a  whole  people?  To 
whom  has  the  tale  not  been  told  of  the  defeat  of 
1679.  Graham  of  Claverhouse  on  Loudon  Hill,  and  the 
subsequent  rout  of  the  insurgent  fanatics  at  Bothwell 
Bridge  ?  Of  the  Cameronians,  hunted  like  beasts  of  prey, 
and  exasperated  by  sufferings  and  despair  ?  refusing,  in  face 
of  the  gallows,  to  say,  "  God  save  the  king ; "  and  charged 


1684.         NORTHERN  COLONIES  CONSOLIDATED.  148 

even  by  their  wives  to  die  for  the  good  old  cause  of  the 
covenant?     "I    am   but   twenty,"    said  an  innocent 
girl  at   her  execution ;  "  and  they  can  accuse  me  of       I68O. 
nothing    but    my   judgment."      The    boot    and   <'he 
thurabikins  could  not  extort  confessions.     The  con- 
demnation of  Argyle  displayed  the  prime  nobility  as       lesi. 
"the  vilest  of    mankind;"  and   wide-spread  cruelty       I682. 
exhausted  itself  in  devising  punishments.     Just  after       1683. 
the  grant  of  East  New  Jersey,  a  proclamation,  un- 
paralleled since  the  days  when  Alva  drove  the  Netherlands 
into  independence,  proscribed  all  who  had  ever  communed 
with  rebels,  and  put  twenty  thousand  lives  at  the  mercy  of 
informers.     "  It  were  better,"  said  Lauderdale,  "  the  country 
bore  windle  straws  and  sand  larks  than  boor  rebels 
to  the  king."     After  the  insurrection  of  Monmouth,       1684. 
the    sanguinary  excesses  of    despotic   revenge   were 
revived,  gibbets  erected  in  villages  to  intimidate  the  people, 
and   soldiers   intrusted   with   the    execution    of    the    laws. 
Scarce  a  Presbyterian  family  in  Scotland  but  was  involved 
in  proscriptions  or  penalties ;  the  jails  overflowed,  and  their 
tenants  were  sold  as  slaves  to  the  plantations. 

Maddened  by  the  succession  of  military  murders  ;  driven 
from  their  homes  to  caves,  from  caves  to  morasses  and 
mountains ;  bringing  death  to  the  inmates  of  a  house  that 
should  shelter  them,  death  to  the  benefactor  that  should 
throw  them  food,  death  to  the  friend  that  listened  to  their 
complaint,  death  to  the  wife  or  the  father  that  still  dared 
to  solace  a  husband  or  a  son ;  ferreted  out  by  spies ;  hunted 
with  packs  of  dogs,  —  the  fanatics  turned  upon  their  pur- 
suers, and  threatened  to  retaliate  on  the  men  who  should 
continue  to  imbrue  their  hands  in  blood.  The  council  re- 
torted by  ordering  a  massacre.  He  that  would  not  take 
the  oath  should  be  executed,  though  unarmed;  and  the 
recusants  were  shot  on  the  roads,  or  as  they  labored  in  the 
fields,  or  as  they  stood  in  prayer.  To  fly  was  a  confession 
of  guilt ;  to  excite  suspicion  was  sentence  of  death ;  to  own 
the  covenant  was  treason.  The  houses  of  the  victims  were 
set  on  fire;  their  families  shipped  for  the  colonies.  "It 
never  will  be  well  with  Scotland,  till  the  country  south  of 


144  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXV. 

the  Forth  is  reduced  to  a  hunting-field."  The  remark  is 
ascribed  to  James.  "I  doubt  not,  sir,  but  to  be  able  to 
propose  a  way  how  to  gratifie  all  such  as  your  majestie  shall 
be  pleased  to  thinke  deserving  of  it,  without  touching  your 
exchequer,"  wrote  Jeffries  to  James  II.,  just  as  he  had 
passed  sentence  of  transportation  on  hundreds  of  Mon- 
mouth's English  followers.  James  II.  sent  the  hint  to  the 
north,  and  in  Scotland  the  business  was  equally  well 
1685.  understood.  The  indemnity  proclaimed  on  the  ac- 
cession of  James  II.  was  an  act  of  delusive  clemency. 
Every  day  wretched  fugitives  were  tried  by  a  jury  of 
soldiers,  and  executed  in  clusters  on  the  highways;  women, 
fastened  to  stakes  beneath  the  sea-mark,  were  drowned  by 
the  rising  tide ;  the  dungeons  were  crowded  with  men 
perishing  for  want  of  water  and  air.  The  humanity  of  the 
government  was  barbarous  ;  of  the  shoals  transported  to 
America,  women  were  often  burnt  in  the  cheek,  men 
marked  by  lopping  off  their  ears. 

Is  it  strange  that  Scottish  Presbyterians  of  virtue,  edu- 
cation, and  courage,  blending  a  love  of  popular  liberty  with 
religious  enthusiasm,  hurried  to  East  New  Jersey  in 
168?!  ^^^^  numbers  as  to  give  to  the  rising  commonwealth 
a  character  which  a  century  and  a  half  has  not 
effaced?  In  1686,  after  the  judicial  murder  of  the  Duke  of 
Argyle,  his  brother.  Lord  Neill  Campbell,  who  had  pur- 
chased the  proprietary  right  of  Sir  George  Mackenzie,  and 
in  the  previous  year  had  sent  over  a  large  number  of  settlers, 
came  himself  to  act  for  a  few  months  as  chief  magistrate. 
When  Campbell  withdrew,  the  executive  power,  weakened 
by  transfers,  was  intrusted  by  him  to  Andrew  Hamilton. 
The  territory,  easy  of  access,  flanked  on  the  west  by  out- 
posts of  Quakers,  was  the  abode  of  peace  and  abundance,  of 
deep  religious  faith  and  honest  industry.  Peaches  and  vines 
grew  wild  on  the  river  sides;  the  woods  were  crimsoned 
with  strawberries;  and  "brave  oysters"  abounded  along 
the  shore.  Brooks  and  rivulets,  with  "  curious  clear  water," 
were  as  plenty  as  in  the  dear  native  Scotland ;  the  houses 
of  the  towns,  unlike  the  pent  villages  of  the  old  world, 
were  scattered  upon  the  several  lots  and  farms ;  the  high- 


1683.  NORTHERN  COLONIES  CONSOLIDATED.  145 

ways  were  so  broad,  that  flocks  of  sheep  could  nibble  by 
the  roadside ;  troops  of  horses  multiplied  in  the  woods.  In 
a  few  years,  a  law  of  the  commonwealth,  giving  force  to 
the  common  principle  of  the  New  England  and  the  Scottish 
Calvinists,  established  a  system  of  free  schools.  It  was  "  a 
gallant,  plentiful"  country,  where  the  humblest  laborer 
might  soon  turn  farmer  for  himself.  In  all  its  borders,  said 
Gawen  Laurie,  the  faithful  Quaker  merchant,  who  had  been 
Rudyard's  successor,  "  there  is  not  a  poor  body,  or  one  that 
wants." 

The  mixed  character  of  New  Jersey  springs  from  the 
different  sources  of  its  people.  Puritans,  Covenanters,  and 
Quakers  met  on  her  soil ;  and  their  faith,  institutions,  and 
preferences,  having  life  in  the  common  mind,  survive  the 
Stuarts. 

Every  thing  breathed  hope,  but  for  the  arbitrary  cupidity 
of  James  II.,  and  the  navigation  acts.  Dyer,  the  collector, 
eager  to  levy  a  tax  on  the  commerce  of  the  colony,  com- 
plained of  their  infringement ;  in  April,  1686,  a  writ  of  quo 
warranto  against  the  proprietaries  menaced  New  Jersey 
with  being  made  "  more  dependent."  It  was  of  no  avail  to 
appeal  to  the  justice  of  King  James,  who  revered  the  pre- 
rogative with  idolatry ;  and  in  1688,  to  stay  the  process  for 
forfeiture,  the  proprietaries,  stipulating  only  for  their  right 
of  property  in  the  soil,  surrendered  their  claim  to  the  juris- 
diction.    The  province  was  annexed  to  New  York. 

In  New  York,  the  attempt  to  levy  customs  without     jggg 
a  colonial  assembly  had  been  defeated  by  the  grand   ^i*'"''^* 
jury,  and  trade  became  free,  just  as  Andros  was  returning 
to  England.     All  parties  joined  in  entreating  for  the  people 
a   share   in    legislation.     The    Duke   of   York    temporized. 
The  provincial  revenue  had  expired ;  the  ablest  lawyers  in 
England  questioned  his  right  to  renew  it ;  the  province  op- 
posed its  collection  with  a  spirit  that  required  com- 
pliance, and  in  January,  1683,  the  newly  appointed       1683. 
governor,  Thomas  Dongan,  nephew  of  Tyrconnell,  a 
Roman  Catholic,  was  instructed  to  call  a  general  assembly 
of  all  the  freeholders,  by  the  persons  whom  they  should 
choose  to  represent  them.     Accordingly,  on  the  seventeenth 

VOL.  II.  10 


146  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXV. 

of  the  following  October,  about  seventy  years  after  Man- 
hattan was  first  occupied,  about  thirty  years  after  the  de- 
mand of  the  popular  convention  by  the  Dutch,  the  people  of 
New  York  met  in  assembly,  and  by  their  first  act  claimed 
the  rights  of  Englishmen.  "  Supreme  legislative  power,"  such 
was  their  further  declaration  "  shall  for  ever  be  and  reside 
in  the  governor,  council,  and  people,  met  in  general  assembly. 
Every  freeholder  and  freeman  shall  vote  for  representation 
without  restraint.  No  freeman  shall  suffer  but  by  judgment 
of  his  peers ;  and  all  trials  shall  be  by  a  jury  of  twelve  men. 
No  tax  shall  be  assessed,  on  any  pretence  whatever,  but  by 
the  consent  of  the  assembly.  No  seaman  or  soldier  shall 
be  quartered  on  the  inhabitants  against  their  will.  No 
martial  law  shall  exist.  No  person,  professing  faith  in 
God  by  Jesus  Christ,  shall  at  any  time  be  any  ways  dis- 
quieted or  questioned  for  any  difference  of  opinion."  Thus 
did  New  York,  by  its  self -enacted  "  charter  of  franchises  and 
privileges,"  take  its  place  by  the  side  of  Virginia  and  Mas- 
sachusetts, surpassing  them  both  in  religious  toleration.  The 
proprietary  accepted  the  revenue  granted  by  the  legislature 
for  a  limited  period,  permitted  another  session  to  be  held, 
and  promised  to  make  no  alterations  in  the  form  or  matter 
of  the  bill  containing  the  franchises  and  privileges  of 
1685.  the  colony,  except  for  its  advantage  ;  but  in  1685, 
in  less  than  a  month  after  James  II.  had  ascended 
the  throne,  he  prepared  to  overturn  the  institutions  which 
he  had  conceded.  A  direct  tax  was  decreed  by  an.  ordi- 
nance ;  the  titles  to  real  estate  were  questioned,  that  larger 
fees  and  quit-rents  might  be  extorted  ;  and,  of  the  farmers 
of  Easthampton  who  protested  against  the  tyranny,  six 
were  arraigned  before  the  council. 

While  the  liberties  of  New  York  were  sequestered  by  a 
monarch  who  desired  to  imitate  the  despotism  of  France, 
its  frontiers  had  no  protection  against  encroachments  from 
Canada,  except  in  the  valor  of  the  Iroquois.  The  Mohawks, 
Oneidas,  Onondagas,' Cayugas,  and  Senecas,  the  Five  Na- 
tions, dwelling  near  the  river  and  the  lakes  that  retain  their 
names,  formed  a  confederacy  of  equal  tribes.  The  union 
of  three  of  the   nations   precedes   tradition;    the   Oneidas 


1685.  NORTHERN  COLONIES  CONSOLIDATED.  147 

and  Senecas  were  younger  associates.  Each  nation  was  a 
sovereign  republic,  divided  again  into  clans,  between  which 
a  slight  subordination  was  scarcely  perceptible.  The  clans- 
men dwelt  in  fixed  places  of  abode,  surrounded  by  fields  of 
beans  and  of  maize ;  each  castle,  like  a  New  England  town 
or  a  Saxon  hundred,  constituted  a  little  democracy.  There 
was  no  slavery,  no  favored  caste.  All  men  were  equal. 
The  union  was  confirmed  by  an  unwritten  compact;  the 
congress  of  the  sachems,  at  Onondaga,  like  the  Witena- 
gemots  of  the  Anglo-Saxons,  transacted  all  common  busi- 
ness. Authority  resided  in  opinion ;  law  in  oral  tradition. 
Honor  and  esteem  enforced  obedience;  shame  and  contempt 
punished  offenders.  The  leading  warrior  was  elected  by 
the  general  confidence  in  his  virtue  and  conduct;  merit 
alone  could  obtain  preferment  to  office  ;  and  power  was 
as  permanent  as  the  esteem  of  the  tribe.  No  profit  was 
attached  to  eminent  station,  to  tempt  the  sordid.  As  their 
brave  men  went  forth  to  war,  instead  of  martial  instru- 
ments, they  were  cheered  by  the  clear  voice  of  their  leader. 
On  the  smooth  surface  of  a  tree  from  which  the  outer  bark 
had  been  peeled,  they  painted  their  deeds  of  valor  by  the 
simplest  symbols.  These  were  their  trophies  and  their 
annals  ;  these  and  their  war-songs  preserved  the  memory  of 
their  heroes.  They  proudly  deemed  themselves  supreme 
among  mankind  ;  men  excelling  all  others ;  and  hereditary 
arrogance  inspired  their  young  men  with  dauntless  courage. 
When  Hudson,  John  Smith,  and  Champlain  were  in  Amer- 
ica together,  the  Mohawks  had  extended  their  strolls  from 
the  St.  Lawrence  to  Virginia ;  half  Long  Island  paid  them 
tribute  ;  and  a  Mohawk  sachem  was  reverenced  on  Massa- 
chusetts Bay.  The  geographical  position  of  their  fixed 
abodes,  including  within  their  immediate  sway  the  head- 
lands not  of  the  Hudson  only,  but  of  the  rivers  that  flow  to 
the  Gulfs  of  Mexico  and  St.  Lawrence,  the  Bays  of  Chesa- 
peake and  Delaware,  opened  widest  regions  to  their  canoes, 
and  invited  them  to  make  their  war-paths  along  the  chan- 
nels w^here  New  York  and  Pennsylvania  are  now  perfecting 
the  avenues  of  commerce.  Becoming  possessed  of  fire- 
arms  by  intercourse  with   the  Dutch,  they  renewed  their 


148  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXV. 

1649.  merciless,  hereditary  warfare  with  the  Hurons ;  and, 
1653  to  in  the  following  years,  the  Eries,  on  the  south  shore 
^^^'  of  the  lake  of  which  the  name  commemorates  their 
1656  to  existence,  were  defeated  and  extirpated.  The  AUe- 
^^^2-  ghany  was  next  descended ;  and  the  tribes  near  Pitts- 
burg, probably  of  the  Huron  race,  leaving  no  monument 
but  a  name  to  the  Guyandot  River  of  Western  Virginia, 
were  subjugated  and  destroyed.  In  the  east  and  in  the 
west,  fron  the  Kennebec  to  the  Missisvsippi,  the  Abenakis  as 
well  as  the  Miamis  and  the  remoter  Illinois,  could  raise  no 
barrier  against  the  invasions  of  the  Iroquois  but  by  alliances 
with  the  French. 

But  the  Five  Nations  had  defied  a  prouder  enemy.     At 
the  commencement  of  the  administration  of  Dongan, 
1676.       the  European  population  of  New  France,  which,  in 
1679,  amounted  to  eight  thousand  five  hundred  and 
fifteen  souls,  may  have  been  a  little  more  than  ten  thou- 
sand ;   the   number   of  men   capable  of   bearing  arms  was 
perhaps  three  thousand,  about  the  number  of  warriors  of 
the  Five  Nations.     But  the  Iroquois  were  freemen  ;  New 
France  suffered  from  despotism  and  monopoly.     The  Iro- 
quois recruited  their  tribes  by  adopting  captives  of  foreign 
nations ;  New  France  was  sealed  against  the  foreigner  and 
the   heretic.     For    nearly   fourscore   years,   hostilities   had 
prevailed,  with  few  interruptions.     Thrice  did  Champlain 
invade  the  country  of   the   Mohawks,   till   he   was 
^1615!^    driven  with  wounds  and  disgrace  from  their  wilder- 
ness fastnesses.     The  Five  Nations,  in  return,  at  the 
I623!       period  of  the  massacre  in  Virginia,  attempted    the 
destruction  of  New  France.     Though  repulsed,  they 
continued  to  defy  the  province   and  its  allies,  and, 
1637.       under  the   eyes  of  its  governor,  openly  intercepted 
canoes  destined  for  Quebec.     The  French  authority 
1640.       was  not  confirmed  by  founding  a  feeble  outpost  at 
1642.       Montreal ;  and  Fort  Richelieu,  at  the  mouth  of  the 
1645.       Sorel,  scarce  protected  its  inimediate  environs.    Nego- 
tiations for  peace  led  to  no  permanent  result ;  and 
even    the   influence   of   the   Jesuit   missionaries,   the   most 
faithful,  disinterested,  and  persevering  of  their  order,  could 


1683.  NORTHERN  COLONIES   CONSOLIDATED.  149 

not  effectually  restrain  the  sanguinary  vengeance   of  the 
barbarians.     The  Iroquois  warriors  scoured  every  wilderness 
to  lay  it  still  more  waste  ;  they  thirsted  for   the  blood  of 
the  few  men  who  roamed  over  the  regions  between 
Lakes  Huron,  Erie,  and  Ontario.     Depopulating  the       1649. 
whole  country  on  the  Ottawa,  they  obtained  an  ac- 
knowledged superiority  over  New  France,  mitigated  only 
by  commercial  relations  of  the  French  traders  with 
the  tribes  that  dwelt  farthest  from  the  Hudson.     The       i654, 
colony  was  still   in  perpetual  danger ;    and    Quebec 
itself  was  besieged. 

A  winter's  invasion  of  the  country  of  the  Mohawks       1666. 
was  useless.     The  savages  disappeared,  leaving  their 
European  adversaries  to  war  with  the  wilderness. 

By  degrees  the  French  made  firmer  advances  ;  and 
a  fort  built  at  the  outlet  of  Ontario,  for  the  j^urpose, 
as  was  pretended,  of  having  a  convenient  place  for  treaties, 
commanded  the  commerce  of  the  lake. 

We  have  seen  the  Mohawks  brighten  the  covenant  i673. 
chain  that  bound  them  to  the  Dutch.  The  English, 
on  recovering  the  banks  of  the  Hudson,  confirmed  without 
delay  the  Indian  alliance,  and,  by  the  confidence  with  which 
their  friendship  inspired  the  Iroquois,  increased  the  dan- 
gers that  hovered  over  New  France. 

The  ruin  which  menaced  Canada  gave  a  transient 
existence  to  a  large  legislative  council ;  and  an  assem-  J^g^ 
bly  of  notables  was  convoked  by  De  la  Barre,  the 
governor-general,  to  devdse  a  remedy  for  the  ills  under 
which  the  settlements  languished.  It  marks  the  character 
of  the  colonists,  that,  instead  of  demanding  civil  franchises, 
they  solicited  a  larger  garrison  from  Louis  XIV. 

The  governor  of  New  York  had  been  instructed  to  1683. 
preserve  friendly  relations  with  the  French ;  but 
Dongan  refused  to  neglect  the  Five  Nations.  From  the 
French  traders  who  were  restrained  by  a  strict  monopoly, 
the  wild  hunters  of  beaver  turned  to  the  English,  who 
favored  competition ;  and  their  mutual  ties  were  strength- 
ened by  an  amnesty  of  past  injuries. 

Along  the  war-paths  of  the  Five  Nations,  down  the  Sua- 


150  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXV. 

quehannah,  and  near  the  highlands  of  Virginia,  the  proud 
Oneida,  Onondaga,  and  Cayuga  warriors  had  left  bloody 
traces  of  their  presence.  The  impending  struggle  with 
New  France  quickened  the  desire  of  renewing  peace 
Juiy*i3.  "^^^^  t^®  English  ;  and  the  deputies  from  the  Mo- 
hawks and  the  three  offending  tribes,  soon  joined  by 
the  Senecas,  met  the  governors  of  New  York  and  Virginia 
at  Albany. 

To  the  complaints  and  the  pacific  proposals  of  Lord 
Howard  of  Effingham,  Cadianne,  the  Mohawk  orator, 
July  14.  replied  :  "  Sachem  of  Virginia,  and  you,  Corlaer, 
sachem  of  New  York,  give  ear,  for  we  will  not  con- 
ceal the  evil  that  has  been  done."  The  orator  then  rebuked 
the  Oneidas,  Onondagas,  and  Cayugas,  for  their  want  of 
faith,  and  gave  them  a  belt  of  wampum,  to  quicken  their 
memory.  Then,  turning  to  Effingham,  he  continued  : 
"  Great  sachem  of  Virginia,  these  three  beaver-skins  are  a 
token  of  our  gladness  that  your  heart  is  softened  ;  these 
two,  of  our  joy  that  the  axe  is  to  be  buried.  We  are  glad 
that  you  will  bury  in  the  pit  what  is  past.  Let  the  earth  be 
trod  hard  over  it;  let  a  strong  stream  run  under  the  pit,  to 
wash  the  evil  away  out  of  our  sight  and  remembrance,  so 
that  it  never  may  be  digged  up.  You  are  wise  to  keep  the 
covenant  chain  bright  as  silver,  and  now  to  renew  it  and 
make  it  stronger.  These  nations  are  chain-breakers;  we 
Mohawks,"  —  as  he  spoke  he  gave  two  beavers  and  a  rac- 
coon,—  "we  Mohawks  have  kept  the  chain  entire.  ■  The 
covenant  must  be  preserved;  the  fire  of  love  of  Virginia 
and  Maryland,  and  of  the  Five  Nations,  burns  in  this  place : 
this  house  of  peace  must  be  kept  clean.  We  plant  a  tree 
whose  top  shall  touch  the  sun,  whose  branches  shall  be  seen 
afar.  We  will  shelter  ourselves  under  it,  and  live  in  unmo- 
lested peace." 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  treaty,  each  of  the  three  offend- 
i»ig  nations  gave  a  hatchet  to  be  buried.  "  We  bury  none 
for  ourselves,"  said  the  Mohawks,  "  for  we  have  never 
broken  the  ancient  chain."  The  axes  were  buried,  and 
the  offending  tribes  in  noisy  rapture  chanted  the  song  of 
peace. 


1684.  NORTHERN  COLONIES  CONSOLIDATED.  351 

"  Brother  Corlaer,"  said  a  chief  for  the  Onondagas  ^^^^ 
and  Cayugas,  "  your  sachem  is  a  great  sachem  ;  and  ^"S-  2. 
we  are  a  small  people.  When  the  English  came  first  to 
Manhattan,  to  Yirginia,  and  to  Maryland,  they  were  a  small 
people,  and  we  were  great.  Because  we  found  you  a  good 
people,  we  treated  you  kindly,  and  gave  you  land.  Now, 
therefore,  that  you  are  great  and  we  small,  we  hope  you 
will  protect  us  from  the  French.  They  are  angry  with  us 
because  we  carry  beaver  to  our  brethren." 

The  envoys  of  the  Senecas  soon  arrived,  and  ex-  Aug.  5. 
pressed  their  delight  that  the  tomahawk  was  already 
buried,  and  all  evil  put  away  from  the  hearts  of  the  English 
sachems.  On  the  same  day,  a  messenger  from  De  la  Barre 
appeared  at  Albany.  But  his  complaints  were  unheeded. 
"  We  have  not  wandered  from  our  paths,"  said  the  Senecas. 
"  But  when  Onondio,  the  sachem  of  Canada,  threatens  us 
with  war,  shall  we  run  away?  Shall  we  sit  still  in  our 
houses?  Our  beaver-hunters  are  brave  men,  and  the  beaver- 
hunt  must  be  free."  The  sachems  returned  to  nail  the  arms 
of  the  Duke  of  York  over  their  castles  ;  a  protection,  as  they 
thought,  against  the  French,  an  acknowledgment,  as  the 
English  deemed,  of  British  sovereignty. 

Meantime,  the  rash  and  confident  De  la  Barre,  with  six 
hundred  French  soldiers,  four  hundred  Indian  allies,  four 
hundred  carriers,  and  three  hundred  men  for  a  garrison, 
advanced  to  the  fort  which  stood  near  the  outlet  of  the 
present  Rideau  Canal.  But  the  exhalations  of  August  on 
the  marshy  borders  of  Ontario  disabled  his  army ;  and, 
after  crossing  the  lake,  and  disembarking  his  wasted  troops 
in  the  land  of  the  Onondagas,  he  was  compelled  to  solicit 
peace  from  the  tribes  whom  he  had  designed  to  exterminate. 
The  Mohawks,  at  the  request  of  the  English,  refused  to 
negotiate ;  but  the  other  nations,  jealous  of  English  suprem- 
acy, desired  to  secure  independence  by  bal.incing  the 
French  against  the  English.  An  Onondaga  chief  called 
Heaven  to  witness  his  resentment  at  English  interference. 
"  Onondio,"  he  proudly  exclaimed  to  the  envoy  of  New 
York,  "  Onondio  has  for  ten  years  been  our  father ;  Corlaer 
has  Ions:  been  our  brother.     But   it   is   because  we   have 


152  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXV. 

willed  it  so.  Neither  the  one  nor  the  other  is  our  master. 
He  who  made  the  world  gave  us  the  land  in  which  we  dwell. 
We  are  free.  You  call  us  subjects ;  we  say  we  are  breth- 
ren ;  we  must  take  care  of  ourselves.  I  will  go  to  my  father, 
for  he  has  come  to  my  gate,  and  desires  to  speak  with  me 
words  of  reason.  We  will  embrace  peace  instead  of  war ; 
the  axe  shall  be  thrown  into  a  deep  water." 

'  The  deputies  of  the  tribes  repaired  to  the  presence  of 
De  la  Barre  to  exult  in  his  humiliation.  "  It  is  well  for 
you,"  said  the  eloquent  Haaskouaun,  rising  from  the  calumet, 
"  that  you  have  left  under  ground  the  hatchet  which  has  so 
often  been  dyed  in  the  blood  of  the  French.  Our  children 
and  old  men  had  carried  their  bows  and  arrows  into  the 
heart  of  your  camp,  if  our  braves  had  not  kept  them  back. 
Our  warriors  have  not  beaver  enough  to  pay  for  the  arms 
we  have  taken  from  the  French ;  and  our  old  men  are  not 
afraid  of  war.  We  may  guide  the  English  to  our  lakes. 
We  are  born  free.  We  depend  neither  on  Onondio  nor 
Corlaer."  Dismayed  by  the  energy  of  the  Seneca  chief,  the 
governor  of  Canada  accepted  a  disgraceful  treaty,  leaving 
his  allies  at  the  mercy  of  their  enemies. 

Meantime,  fresh  troops  arrived  from  France ;  and  De 
la  Bnrre  was  superseded  by  Denonville,  an  officer  whom 
Charlevoix  extols  as  possessing,  in  a  sovereign  degree,  every 
quality  of  a  perfectly  honorable  man.  His  example,  it  is 
said,  made  virtue  and  religion  more  respectable ;  his 
1685.  tried  valor  and  active  zeal  were  enhanced  by  prudence 
and  sagacity.  But  blind  obedience  paralyzes  con- 
science and  enslaves  reason  ;  and  quiet  pervaded  neither  the 
Five  Nations  nor  the  English  provinces. 

For  the  defence  of  New  France,  a  fort -was  to  be  estab- 
lished at  Niagara.     The  design,  which  would  have 
jj^y       controlled  the   fur-trade    of    the    upper    lakes,   was 
resisted  by  Dongan ;   for,  it  was  said,  the  country 
south  of   the  lakes,  the  whole  domain  of  the  Iroquois,  is 
subject  to   England.     Thus  began  the  long  contest 
May  22.  for  territory  in  the  west.      The  limits  between  the 
English  and  French  never  were  settled ;  but,  for  the 
present,  the  Five  Nations  of  themselves  were  a  sufficient 


1687.  NORTHERN  COLONIES   CONSOLIDATED.  153 

bulwark  against  encroachments  from  Canada,  and  in  the 
Bummer  of  1686  a  party  of  English  traders  penetrated  even 
to  Michilimackinac. 

The  gentle  spirit  which  swayed  William  Penn  at  Shak- 
amaxon  did  not  find  its  way  into  the  voluptuous  councils 
of  Versailles.  "  The  welfare  of  my  service,"  such  were  the 
instructions  of  Louis  XIV.  to  the  governor  of  New  France, 
"  requires  that  the  number  of  the  Iroquois  should  be  dimin- 
ished as  much  as  possible.  They  are  strong  and  robust, 
and  can  be  made  useful  as  galley-slaves.  Do  what  you  can 
to  take  a  large  number  of  them  prisoners  of  war,  and 
ship  them  for  France."  By  open  hostilities,  no  i687. 
captives  could  be  made ;  and  Lamberville,  the  mis- 
sionary among  the  Onondagas,  was  unconsciously  employed 
to  decoy  the  Iroquois  chiefs  into  the  fort  on  Ontario.  In- 
vited to  negotiate  a  treaty,  they  assemble  without  distrust, 
are  surprised,  put  in  irons,  hurried  to  Quebec,  and  thence 
to  Europe,  and  the  warrior  hunters  of  the  Five  Nations, 
who  used  to  roam  from  Hudson's  Bay  to  Carolina,  were 
chained  to  the  oar  in  the  galleys  of  Marseilles. 

Meantime,  the  old  men  of  the  Onondagas  summoned 
Lamberville  to  their  presence.  "  We  have  much  reason," 
said  an  aged  chief,  "to  treat  thee  as  an  enemy;  but  we 
know  thee  too  well.  Thou  hast  betrayed  us ;  but  treason 
was  not  in  thy  heart.  Fly,  therefore,  for,  when  our  young 
braves  shall  have  sung  their  war-song,  they  will  listen  to  no 
voice  but  the  swelling  voice  of  their  anger."  And  trusty 
guides  conducted  the  missionary  through  by-paths  into  a 
place  of  security.  The  noble  forbearance  was  due  to  the 
counsel  of  Garonkonthie. 

An  incursion  into  the  country  of  the  Senecas  followed. 
The  savages  retired  into  remoter  forests ;  of  the  domain 
which  was  overrun  without  resistance,  possession  was  taken 
by  the  French,  and  a  fort  erected  at  the  point  where  the 
Niagara  pours  its  waters  into  Lake  Ontario.  France  seemed 
to  have  gained  firm  possession  of  Western  New  York. 
But,  as  the  French  army  withdrew,  the  wilderness  remained 
to  its  old  inhabitants.  The  Senecas  in  their  turn  made  a 
descent  upon  their  still  feebler  enemy ;  and  the  Onondagas 


154  COLONIAL   HISTOKY.  Chap.  XXV. 

threatened  war.  "  Onondio  has  stolen  our  saohems  ;  he 
has  broken,"  said  they,  "the  covenant  of  peace;"  and 
Dongan,  at  the  solicitation  of  the  French,  offered  himself 
as  mediator,  but  only  on  condition  that  the  kidnapped  chiefs 
should  be  ransomed,  the  fort  in  the  Iroquois  country  razed, 
and  the  spoils  of  the  Senecas  restored. 

1688  "^^^^  negotiations  fail ;  and  Haaskouaun  advances 

with  five  hundred  warriors  to  dictate  the  terms  of 
peace.  "  I  have  always  loved  the  French,"  said  the  proud 
chieftain  to  the  foes  whom  he  scorned.  "  Our  warriors 
proposed  to  come  and  burn  your  forts,  your  houses,  your 
granges,  and  your  corn  ;  to  weaken  you  by  famine,  and  then 
to  overwhelm  you.  I  am  come  to  tell  Onondio  he  can 
escape  this  misery,  if  within  four  days  he  will  yield  to  the 
terms  which  Corlaer  has  proposed." 

Twelve  hundred  Iroquois  were  already  on  Lnke  St. 
Francis ;  in  two  days  they  could  reach  Montreal.  The 
haughty  condescension  of  the  Seneca  chief  was  accepted, 
the  ransom  of  the  Iroquois  chiefs  conceded,  and  the  whole 
country  south  of  the  chain  of  lakes  rescued  from  the 
dominion  of  Canada.  In  the  course  of  events,  New  York 
owes  its  present  northern  boundary  to  the  valor  of  the  Five 
Nations.  But  for  them  Canada  would  have  embraced  the 
basin  of  the  St.  Lawrence. 

1686.  During  these   events,  James  II.  had,  in  a  treaty 

^^^'  with  Louis  Xiy.,  made  it  a  condition  of  amity  be- 
tween the  colonies  of  the  two  states  that  neither  should 
assist  the  Indian  tribes  with  whom  the  other  might  be  at 
war.  Thus  did  the  king  of  England  ignorantly  abandon 
his  allies.  Yet,  with  all  his  faults,  James  II.  had  a  strong 
sentiment  of  English  nationality ;  and,  in  consolidating  the 
northern  colonies,  he  hoped  to  engage  the  energies  of  New 
England  in  defence  of  the  whole  English  frontier. 

The  alarm  of  Massachusetts  at  the  loss  of  its  charter 
had  been  increased  by  the  news  that  Kirke,  after- 
wards infamous  for  military  massacres  in  the  west  of  Eng- 
land, was  destined  for  its  governor.  It  was  a  relief  to  find 
that  Joseph  Dudley,  a  degenerate  son  of  the  colony,  was 
intrusted  for  a  season  with  the  highest  powers  of  magistracy 


1688.  NORTHERN  COLONIES  CONSOLIDATED.  155 

over  the  country  from  Narragansett  to  Nova  Scotia. 
The  general  court,  in  session  at  his  arrival,  and  un-  May^i'5. 
prepared  for  open  resistance,  dissolved  their  assembly, 
and  returned  in  sadness  to  their  homes.  The  charter 
government  was  publicly  displaced  by  the  arbitrary  May  25. 
commission,  popular  representation  abolished,  and  the 
press  subjected  to  the  censorship  of  Randolph.  Nov.  29. 

At  last.  Sir  Edmund  Andros,  glittering  in  scarlet  Dec.  20. 
and  lace,  landed  at  Boston,  as  governor  of  all  New 
England.  How  unlike  Penn  at  Newcastle  !  He  was  au- 
thorized to  remove  and  appoint  members  of  his  council, 
and,  with  their  consent,  to  make  laws,  lay  taxes,  and  control 
the  militia  of  the  country.  He  was  instructed  to  tolerate 
no  printing-press,  to  encourage  Episcopacy,  and  to  sustain 
authority  by  force.  From  New  York  came  West  as  secre- 
tary. In  the  council,  there  were  four  subservient  members, 
of  whom  but  one  was  a  New  England  man.  The  other  mem- 
bers formed  a  fruitless  but  united  opposition.  "  His  excel- 
lency," said  Randolph,  "  has  to  do  with  a  perverse  people." 

A  series  of  measures  followed,  the  most  vexatious  and 
tyrannical  to  which  men  of  English  descent  were  ever 
exposed.  "The  wicked  walked  on  every  side;  and  the 
vilest  men  were  exalted."  As  agents  of  James  II.,  they 
established  an  arbitrary  government ;  as  men  in  office,  they 
coveted  large  emoluments. 

The  schools  of  learning,  formerly  so  well  taken  care  of, 
were  allowed  to  go  to  decay.  The  religious  institutions 
were  impaired  by  abolishing  the  methods  of  their  support. 
"  It  is  pleasant,"  said  the  foreign  agents  of  tyranny,  "  to 
behold  poor  coblers  and  pitiful  mechanics,  who  have  neither 
home  nor  land,  strutting  and  making  noe  mean  figure  at 
their  elections,  and  some  of  the  richest  merchants  and 
wealthiest  of  the  people  stand  by  as  insignificant 
cyphers  ; "  and  therefore  a  town-meeting  was  al-  mI^ig. 
lowed  only  for  the  choice  of  town  officers.  The 
vote  by  ballot  was  rejected.  To  a  committee  from  Lynn, 
Andros  said  plainly  :  "  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  town  in 
the  whole  country."  To  assemble  in  town-meeting  for 
deliberation  was  an  act  of  sedition  or  a  riot. 


156  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXV. 

1687.  Personal  liberty  and  the  customs  of  the  country- 

were  disregarded.  None  might  leave  the  colony 
without  a  special  permit.  Probate  fees  were  increased 
almost  twenty-fold.  "  West,"  says  Randolph,  —  for  dis- 
honest men  betray  one  another,  — "  extorts  what  fees  he 
pleases,  to  the  great  oppression  of  the  people,  and  renders 
the  present  government  grievous."  To  the  scrupulous 
Puritans,  the  idolatrous  custom  of  laying  the  hand  on  the 
Bible,  in  taking  an  oath,  operated  as  a  widely  disfranchising 
test. 

The  Episcopal  service  had   never   yet   been   performed 
within  Massachusetts  Bay,  except  by  the  chaplain  of  the 
hated  commission  of  1665.     Its  day  of  liberty  was 
j^;       come.     Andros  demanded  one  of  the  meeting-houses 
for  the  church.     The  wrongs  of  a  century  crowded 
on  the  memories  of  the  Puritans,  as  they  answered  :  "  We 
cannot  with  a  good  conscience   consent."     Goodman  Need- 
ham  declared  he  would  not  ring  the  bell ;  but  at  the 
illf/25.  f^ppointed  hour  the  bell  rung ;  and  the  love  of  liberty 
did  not  expire,  even  though,  in  a  Boston  meeting- 
house, the  Common  Prayer  was  read  in   a  surplice. 
Jiufe23,  ^y  ^^^  ^y»  ^^^  people  were   desired   to  contribute 
towards  erecting  a  church.     "  The  bishops,"  answered 
Sewall,  "  would  have  thought  strange  to  have  been  asked  to 
contribute  towards  setting  up  New  England  churches." 
At  the  instance  and  with  the  special  concurrence  of  James 
II.,  a  tax  of  a  penny  in  the  pound  and  a  poll-ta^x  of 
mS?^3.    twenty  pence,  with  a  subsequent  increase  of  duties, 
were  laid  by  Andros  and  his  council.     The  towns 
generally  refused  payment.     Wilbore,  of  Taunton,  was  im- 
prisoned for  writing  a  protest.      To  the  people   of 
Aug.  23.  Ipswich,  then  the  second  town  in  the  colony,  in  town- 
meeting,  John  Wise,  the  minister  who  used  to  assert, 
"Democracy  is  Christ's  government  in  church  and  state," 
advised  resistance.     "  We  have,"  said  he,  "  a  good  God  and 
a  good  king ;  we  shall  do  well  to  stand  to  our  privileges." 
"  You  have   no  privilege,"  answered   one   of   the  council, 
after  the  arraignment  of  Wise  and  the   selectmen,  "you 
have  no  privilege  left  you  but  not  to  be  sold  as  slaves." 


1688.  NORTHERN  COLONIES   CONSOLIDATED.  157 

"  Do  you  believe,"  demanded  Andros,  "  Joe  and  Tom  may- 
tell  the  king  what  money  he  may  have  ? "  The  writ  of 
habeas  corpus  was  withheld.  .The  prisoners  pleaded  Magna 
Charta.  "  Do  not  think,"  replied  one  of  the  judges,  "  the 
laws  of  England  follow  you  to  the  ends  of  the  earth."  And 
in  his  charge  to  the  packed  jury,  Dudley  spoke  plainly : 
"  Worthy  gentlemen,  we  expect  a  good  verdict  from  you." 
The  verdict  followed ;  and  after  imprisonment  came  heavy 
fines  and  partial  disfranchisements. 

Oppression  threatened  the  country  with  ruin ;  and  the 
oppressors,  quoting  an  opinion  current  among  the  mercan- 
tile monopolists  of  England,  answered  without  disguise: 
"It  is  not  for  his  majesty's  interest  you   should   thrive." 

The  taxes,  in  amount  not  grievous,  were  for  pub-  lesz. 
lie  purposes.  But  the  lean  wolves  of  tyranny  were  ^^^^• 
themselves  hungry  for  spoils.  In  1680,  Randolph  had 
hinted  that  "  the  Bostoneers  have  no  right  to  government 
or  land,  but  are  usurpers."  It  was  the  intention  of  King 
James  that  "  their  several  properties,  according  to  their 
ancient  records,"  should  be  granted  them  ;  the  fee  for  the 
grants  was  the  excuse  for  extortion.  "  All  the  inhabitants," 
wrote  Randolph,  exultingly,  "  must  take  new  grants  of  their 
lands,  which  will  bring  in  vast  profits."  Indeed  there  was 
not  money  enough  in  the  country  to  have  paid  the  exorbi- 
tant fees  which  were  demanded. 

The  colonists  pleaded  their  charter;  but  grants  under 
the  charter  were  declared  void  by  its  forfeiture.  Lynde,  of 
Charlestown,  produced  an  Indian  deed.  It  was  pronounced 
"  worth  no  more  than  the  scratch  of  a  bear's  paw."  Lands 
were  "held  not  by  a  feudal  tenure,  but  under  grants  from 
the  general  court  to  towns,  and  from  towns  to  individuals. 
The  town  of  Lynn  produced  its  records ;  they  were  slighted 
"  as  not  worth  a  rush."  Others  pleaded  possession  and  use 
of  the  land.  "  You  take  possession,"  it  was  answered,  "  for 
the  king."  "The  men  of  Massachusetts  did  much  quote 
Lord  Coke;"  but,  defeated  in  argument  by  Andros,  who 
was  a  good  lawyer,  John  Higginson,  minister  of  Salem, 
went  back  from  the  common  law  of  England  to  the  book  of 
Genesis,  and,  remembeiing  that  God  gave  the  earth  to  the 


158  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXV. 

sons  of  Adam  to  be  subdued  and  replenished,  declared  that 
the  people  of  New  England  held  their  lands  "  by  the  grand 
charter  from  God."  And  Andros,  incensed,  bade  him  ap- 
prove himself  "  a  subject  or  a  rebel."  The  lands  reserved 
for  the  poor,  generally  all  common  lands,  were  appropriated 
by  favorites ;  writs  of  intrusion  were  multiplied ;  and  fees, 
amounting,  in  some  cases,  to  one  fourth  the  value  of  an 
estate,  were  exacted  for  granting  a  patent  to  its  owner. 
A  selected  jury  offered  no  relief.  "  Our  condition," 
Oc?22.  ^^^^  Danforth,  "  is  little  inferior  to  absolute  slavery ; " 
and  the  people  of  Lynn  afterwards  gave  thanks  to 
God  for  their  escape  from  the  worst  of  bondage.  "  The 
governor  invaded  liberty  and  property  after  such  a  man- 
ner," said  the  temperate  Increase  Mather,  "  as  no  man  could 
say  any  thing  was  his  own." 

By  the  additional  powers  and  instructions  of  June,  1686, 
Andros  was  authorized  to  demand  the  Rhode  Island  char- 
ter, and  to  receive  that  of  Connecticut,  if  tendered  to  him. 
Against  the  charter  of  Rhode  Island  a  writ  of  quo  warranto 
had  been  issued.  The  judgment  against  Massachusetts  left 
no  hope  of  protection  from  courts  submissive  to  the  royal 
will ;  and  the  Quakers,  acting  under  instructions  from 
May\  *^®  towns,  resolved  not  "  to  stand  suit,"  but  to  appeal 
to  the  conscience  of  the  king  for  the  "  privileges 
and  liberties  granted  by  Charles  II.,  of  blessed  memory." 
Flowers  were  strown  on  the  tomb  of  Nero ;  the  colony  of 
Rhode  Island  had  cause  to  bless  the  memory  of  Charles  II. 
Soon  after  the  arrival  of  Andros,  he  demanded  the  surren- 
der of  the  charter.  "Walter  Clarke,  the  governor,  insisted 
on  waiting  for  "  a  fitter  season."  Repairing  to  Rhode 
jsS^iz.  Island,  Andros,  in  January,  1687,  dissolved  its  gov- 
ernment and  broke  its  seal ;  five  of  its  citizens  were 
appointed  members  of  his  council,  and  a  commission,  irre- 
sponsible to  the  people,  was  substituted  for  the  suspended 
system  of  freedom.  That  the  magistrates  levied  moderate 
taxes,  payable  in  wool  or  other  produce,  is  evident  from 
the  records.  It  was  pretended  that  the  people  of  Rhode 
Island  were  satisfied,  and  did  not  so  much  as  petition  for 
their  charter  again. 


1687.  NORTHERN  COLONIES   CONSOLmATED,  159 

In  the  autumn  of  the  same  year,  Andros,  attended  jgg^ 
by  some  of  his  council,  and  by  an  armed  guard,  set  ^^^-  26- 
forth  to  assume  the  government  of  Connecticut.  How  un- 
like the  march  of  Hooker  and  his  peaceful  flock  !  Dongan 
had  in  vain  solicited  the  people  of  Connecticut  to  submit 
to  his  jurisdiction  ;  yet  they  desired,  least  of  all,  to  hazard, 
the  continuance  of  liberty  on  the  decision  of  the  dependent 
English  courts.  On  the  third  writ  of  quo  warranto,  the 
colony,  in  a  petition  to  the  king,  asserted  its  chartered 
rights,  yet  desired,  in  any  event,  rather  to  share  the  for- 
tunes of  Massachusetts  than  to  be  annexed  to  New 
York.  Andros  found  the  assembly  in  session,  and  Oct.  3i. 
demanded  the  surrender  of  its  charter.  The  brave 
governor  Treat  pleaded  earnestly  for  the  cherished  patent, 
which  had  been  purchased  by  sacrifices  and  martyrdoms, 
and  was  endeared  by  halcyon  days.  The  shades  of  evening 
descended  during  the  prolonged  discussion ;  an  anxious 
crowd  had  gathered  to  witness  the  debate.  Tradition  loves 
to  relate  that  the  charter  lay  on  the  table ;  that  of  a  sud- 
den the  lights  were  extinguished,  and,  when  they  were  re- 
kindled, the  charter  had  disappeared.  It  is  certain  that 
"  in  this  very  troublesome  season,  when  the  constitution  of 
Connecticut  was  struck  at.  Captain  Joseph  Wadsworth,  of 
Hartford,  rendered  fruitful  and  good  service  in  securing 
the  duplicate  charter  of  the  colony,  and  safely  keeping  and 
preserving  the  same "  for  nearly  eight-and-twenty  years. 
The  precious  parchment  may  for  a  time  have  lain  concealed 
in  the  hollow  of  an  oak.  Meantime  Andros  assumed  the 
government,  selected  councillors,  and,  demanding  the  rec- 
ords of  Connecticut,  to  the  annals  of  its  freedom  set  the 
word  Finis.  One  of  his  few  laws  prohibited  town-meet- 
ings except  for  the  election  of  officers.  The  colonists  sub- 
mitted ;  yet  their  consciences  were  afterwards  "  troubled  at 
their  hasty  surrender." 

If  Connecticut  lost  its  liberties,  the  eastern  frontier  was 
depopulated.  An  expedition  against  the  French  establish- 
ments, which  have  left  a  name  to  Castine,  roused  the  pas- 
sions of  the  neighboring  Indians  ;  and  Andros,  after  a  short 
deference  to  the  example  of  Penn,  made  a  vain  pursuit 


160  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXV. 

1688.       of  a  retreating  enemy,  who  had  for  their  powerful 

allies  the  savage  forests  and  the  inclement  winter. 
July.  Not  long  after  the  first  excursion  to  the  east,  the 

whole  seaboard  from  Maryland  to  the  St.  Croix  was 
united  in  one  extensive  despotism.  The  entire  dominion, 
of  which  Boston,  the  largest  English  town  in  the  New 
"World,  was  the  capital,  was  abandoned  to  Andros,  its 
governor-general,  and  to  Randolph,  its  secretary,  with  his 
needy  associates.  But  the  impoverished  country  disap- 
pointed avarice.  The  eastern  part  of  Maine  had  already 
been  pillaged  by  agents,  who  had  been  —  it  is  Randolph's 
own  statement  —  "  as  arbitrary  as  the  Grand  Turk ; "  and 
in  New  York,  also,  there  was,  as  Randolph  expressed  it, 
"  little  good  to  be  done,"  for  its  people  "  had  been  squeezed 
dry  by  Dongan."  But,  on  the  arrival  of  the  new 
July  30.  commission,  Andros  hastened  to  the  south  to  super- 
sede his  hated  rival,  and  assume  the  government  of 
New  York  and  New  Jersey. 

1687.  The  spirit  which  led  forth  the  colonies  of  New 

1688.  England  kept  their  liberties  alive ;  in  the  general 
gloom,  the  ministers  preached  sedition  and  planned  resist- 
ance. Once  at  least,  to  the  great  anger  of  the  governor, 
they  put  by  thanksgiving ;  and  at  private  fasts  they  besought 
the  Lord  to  repent  himself  for  his  servants,  whose  power 
was  gone.  The  enlightened  Moody  refused  to  despair,  con- 
fident that  God  would  yet  "  be  exalted  among  the  heathen." 

1688.  On  the  Lord's  Day,  which  was  to  have  been  the 
Apr.  29.  ^g^y  qI  thanksgiving  for  the  queen's  pregnancy,  the 
church  was  much  grieved  at  the  weakness  of  Allen,  who, 
from  the  literal  version  of  the  improved  Bay  Psalm  Book, 
gave  out, — 

Jehovah,  in  thy  strength  The  king  shall  joyful  be. 
And  joy  in  thy  salvation,  How  vehemently  shall  hee  ! 
Thou  granted  hast  to  him  That  which  his  heart  desired. 
But  Willard,  while  before  prayer  he  read,  among  many 
other  notices,  the  occasion  of  the  governor's  gratitude, 
and,  after  Puritan  usage,  interceded  largely  for  the  king, 
"otherwise  altered  not  his  course  one  jot,"  and,  as  the 
crisis  drew  near,  goaded  the  people  with  the  text,  "  Ye 
have  not  yet  resisted  unto  blood,  warring  against  sin." 


1667.  THE  REVOLUTION  OF  1688. 


161 


CHAPTER  XXYI.  "^C^         \ 

THE    REYOLUTIOIS-    OF    1688. 

Desperate  measures  were  postponed,  that  one  of  the 
ministers  might  make  an  appeal  to  the  king-;  .,and  Increase 
Mather,  escaping  the  vigilance  of  Randolph,  embarked  on 
the  dangerous  mission  for  redress.  But  relief  came  from 
a  revolution  of  which  the  influence  was  to  pervade  the 
world. 

On  the  restoration  of  Charles  II.,  the  Puritan  or  leeo  to 
republican  element  lost  all  hope  of  gaining  dominion  ;  ^^^^" 
and  the  history  of  England,  during  its  next  period,  is  but 
the  history  of  the  struggle  for  a  compromise  between  the 
republican  and  the  monarchical  principle.  The  contest  for 
freedom  was  continued,  yet  within  limits  so  narrow  as  never 
to  endanger  the  existence,  or  even  question  the  right,  of 
monarchy  itself.  The  people  had  attempted  a  democratic 
revolution,  and  had  failed ;  no  longer  struggling  to  control 
events,  it  was  now  willing  to  wait  and  watch  the  move- 
ments of  the  men  of  property  of  the  country. 

The  ministry  of  Clarendon,  the  first  after  the  res-  leco  to 
toration,  acknowledged  the  indefeasible  sovereignty  ^^^^' 
of  the  king,  and  sought  in  the  prelates  and  high  nobility 
the  natural  allies  to  the  royal  prerogative.  Its  policy,  not 
destitute  of  honest  nationality,  nor  wholly  regardless  of 
English  liberties,  yet  renewed  intolerance  in  religion ;  and, 
while  it  respected  a  balance  of  powers,  claimed  the  prepon- 
derance in  the  state  for  the  monarch.  But  twenty  years 
of  freedom  had  rendered  the  suppression  of  dissent  from 
the  church  of  England  more  than  ever  impossible.  The 
country  was  dissatisfied ;  ceasing  to  desire  a  republic,  it 
still  demanded  greater  security  for  freedom.  But,  as  no 
general   election   for   parliament   was   held,   a    change    of 

VOL.  II.  11 


162  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVL 

ministry  could  be  effected  only  by  a  faction  within  the 
palace.  The  royal  -council  sustained  Clarendon ;  the  rakes 
about  court,  railing  at  his  moroseness,  echoed  the  popular 
clamor  against  him.  His  overthrow  "  was  certainly  de- 
signed in  Lady  Castlemaine's  chamber;"  and,  as  he  retired 
at  noonday  from  the  audience  of  dismission,  she  ran  un- 
dressed from  bed  into  her  aviary,  to  enjoy  the  spectacle  of 
the  fallen  minister,  and  "  bless  herself  at  the  old  man's 
going  away."  The  gallants  of  Whitehall  crowded  to  "talk 
to  her  in  her  bird-cage."  "  You,"  said  they  to  her,  as  they 
glanced  at  the  retiring  chancellor,  "  you  are  the  bird  of 
passage." 

1668  to  The  administration  of  the  king's  cabal  followed. 
1671.  England  had  demanded  a  liberal  ministry ;  it  ob- 
tained a  dissolute  one :  it  had  demanded  a  ministry  not 
enslaved  to  prelacy ;  it  obtained  one  indifferent  to  all  re- 
ligion, and  careless  of  every  thing  but  pleasure.  Bucking- 
ham, the  noble  buffoon  at  its  head,  debauched  other  men's 
wives,  fought  duels,  and  kept  about  him  a  train  of  volup- 
tuaries ;  but  he  was  not,  like  Clarendon,  a  tory  by  system ; 
far  from  building  up  the  exclusive  church  of  Engband,  he 
ridiculed  bishops  as  well  as  sermons  ;  and  when  the  Quakers 
went  to  him  with  their  hats  on,  to  discourse  on  the  equal 
rights  of  every  conscience,  he  told  them  that  he  was  at 
heart  in  favor  of  their  principle.  English  honor  was 
wrecked  ;  English  finances  became  bankrupt ;  but  the  prog- 
ress of  the  nation  towards  internal  freedom  was  no  longer 
opposed  with  steadfast  consistency ;  and  England  was  bet- 
ter satisfied  than  it  had  been  with  the  wise  and  virtuous 
Clarendon. 

As  the  tendency  of  the  cabal  became  apparent,  a  new 
division  necessarily  followed :  the  king  was  surrounded  by 
men  who  still  desired  to  uphold  the  prerogative,  and  stay 
the  movement  of  the  age  ;  while  Shaftesbury,  always  con- 
sistent in  his  purpose,  "  unwilling  to  hurt  the  king, 
^1073!°  y^^  desiring  to  keep  him  tame  in  a  cage ; "  averse 
to  the  bishops,  because  the  bishops  would  place  pre- 
rogative above  liberty;  averse  to  democracy,  because 
democracy  would    substitute    freedom   for  privilege, — in 


1679.  THE  REVOLUTION  OF  1688.  163 

organizing  a  party,  afterwards  known  as  the  whig  party, 
suited  himself  to  the  spirit  of  the  times.  It  was  an  age  of 
progress  towards  liberty  of  conscience;  Shaftesbury  fav- 
ored toleration :  it  was  an  age  when  the  vast  increase  of 
commercial  activity  claimed  for  the  moneyed  interest  an 
influence  in  the  government;  Shaftesbury  always  lent  a 
willing  ear  to  the  merchants.  Commerce  and  Protestant 
toleration  were  the  elements  of  his  power  over  the  public 
mind.  He  did  not  so  much  divide  dominion  with  the  mer- 
chants and  the  Presbyterians  as  act  as  their  patron  ;  having 
himself  for  his  main  object  to  keep  "  the  bucket "  of 
the  aristocracy  from  sinking.  The  declaration  of  in-  1672. 
dulgence,  an  act  of  high  prerogative,  yet  directed 
against  the  friends  of  prerogative,  was  his  measure.  Im- 
mediately freedom  of  conscience  awakened  in  English  in- 
dustry unparalleled  energies ;  and  Shaftesbury,  the  skeptic 
chancellor,  was  eulogized  as  the  savior  of  religion.  Had 
the  king  been  firm,  the  measure  would  probably  have  suc- 
ceeded. He  wavered ;  for  he  distrusted  the  dissenters : 
the  Presbyterians  wavered  also ;  for  how  could  they  be 
satisfied  with  relief  dependent  on  the  royal  pleasure  ?  The 
seal  of  the  declaration  was  broken  in  the  king's  presence ; 
and  Shaftesbury,  confiding  no  longer  in  the  favor  of  his 
fickle  sovereign,  courted  a  popular  party  by  securing  the 
passage  of  a  test  act  against  papists,  and  advocating 
with  power  a  bill  for  the  ease  of  Protestant  dissenters.  i673. 
Shaftesbury  fell. 

Under  the  lord  treasurer,  Danby,  the  old  Cav-  leisto 
aliers  recovered  power.  It  was  the  day  for  statues  ^^^^' 
to  Charles  I.  and  new  cathedrals.  To  win  strength  for  his 
party  from  the  favor  of  Protestant  opinion,  Danby  avowed 
his  willingness  to  aid  in  crushing  popery,  and  he  gave  his 
influence  to  the  popish  plot.  But  Shaftesbury  was  already 
sure  of  the  merchants  and  dissenters.  "  Let  the  treasurer," 
exclaimed  the  fallen  chancellor,  "  cry  as  loud  as  he  pleases  ; 
I  will  cry  a  note  louder,  and  soon  take  his  place  at  the 
head  of  the  plot ; "  and,  indifferent  to  perjuries  and  judicial 
murders,  he  was  successful.  In  the  subservient  house  of 
commons,  there  were  many  corrupt  members  who  would 


164 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVL 


never  have  been  elected  but  in  tbe  iirst  fit  of  loyalty  at  the 
restoration.  Danby  preferred  the  unfitness  of  a  perpetual 
parliament  to  the  hazard  of  a  new  election,  and,  by  pensions 
and  rewards,  purchased  the  votes  of  the  profligate.  But 
knavery  has  a  wisdom  of  its  own  ;  the  profligate  members 
had  a  fixed  maxim,  never  to  grant  so  much  at  once  that 
they  should  cease  to  be  wanted  ;  and,  discovering  the  in- 
trigues of  Danby  for  a  permanent  revenue  from  France, 
they  were  honorably  true  to  nationality,  and,  true 
Ja^fk.  ^^^^  *^  ^^^  ^^^^  instinct  of  selfishness,  they  impeached 
the  minister.  To  save  the  minister,  this  longest  of 
English  parliaments  was  dissolved. 

"When,  after  nineteen  years,  the  people  of  England  were 
once  more  allowed  to  elect  representatives,  the  great  ma- 
jority against  the  court  compelled  a  reorganization  of  the 
ministry ;  and,  by  the  force  of  public  opinion  and  of  par- 
liament, Shaftesbury,  whom,  for  his  mobility  and  his  diminu- 
tive stature,'  the  king  called  Little  Sincerity,  corn- 
Apr.  21.  pelled  the  reluctant  monarch  to  appoint  him  lord 
president  of  the  council.  The  event  is  an  era  in 
English  history.  Ministers  had  been  impeached  and  driven 
from  office  by  the  commons.  It  is  the  distinction  of  Shaftes- 
bury that  he  was  the  first  statesman  to  attain  the  guidance 
of  a  ministry  through  parliament  by  means  of  an  organized 
party,  and  against  the  wishes  of  the  king.  In  the  cabinet, 
the  bill  of  exclusion  of  the  Duke  of  York  from  the  succes- 
sion was  demanded ;  a  bill  for  ihat  purpose  was  introduced 
into  the  house  of  commons ;  and  it  was  observed  that  the 
young  men  cried  up  every  measure  against  the  duke  ;  "  like 
so  many  young  spaniels,  that  run  and  bark  at  every  lark 
that  springs."  "The  axe,"  wrote  Charles,  "is  laid  to  the 
root ;  and  monarchy  must  go  down  too,  or  bow  exceeding 
low  before  the  almighty  power  of  parliament ; "  and  just 
after  Shaftesbury,  who,  as  chancellor,  had  opened  the  prison- 
doors  of  Banyan,  now,  as  president  of  the  council,  had 
procured  the  passage  of  the  habeas  corpus  act,  the 
May  27.  commons  were  prorogued  and  dissolved.  Shaftes- 
bury was  displaced,  and  henceforward  the  councils 
of  the  Stuarts  inclined  to  absolutism. 


1G81.  THE  REVOLUTION  OF  1688.  165 

Immediately  universal  agitation  roused  the  spirit     ^q^q 
of  the  nation.     Under  the  influence  of  Shaftesbury's    ^^^-  ^' 
genius,  on  Queen  Elizabeth's  night,  a  vast  procession,  bear- 
ing devices  and  wax  figures  representing  nuns  and  monks, 
bishops  in  copes  and  mitres,  and  also  —  it  should  be  ob- 
served, for  it   proves  how  much  the   Presbyterians  were 
courted  —  bishops  in  lawn,  cardinals  in  red  caps,  and,  last 
of  all,  the  pope  of  Rome,  side  by  side  in  a  litter  with  the 
devil,  moved  through  the   streets   of  London,  under   the 
glare  of  thousands  of  flambeaux,  and  in  the  presence  of  two 
hundred  thousand  spectators ;   the  disobedient  Monmouth 
was  welcomed  with  bonfires  and  peals  of  bells  ;  a  panic  was 
created,  as  if  every  Protestant  freeman  were  to  be  massa- 
cred, every  wife  and  daughter  to  be  violated ;  the  kingdom 
was  divided  into  districts  among  committees  to  procure  pe- 
titions for  a  parliament,  one  of  which  had  twenty  thousand 
signatures  and  measured  three  hundred  feet ;  and  at  last  the 
mbst  cherished  Anglo-Saxon  institution  was  made  to   do 
service,  when  Shaftesbury,  proceeding  to  Westmin- 
ster,  represented   to   the    grand    jury   the    mighty  junt^ig. 
dangers  from  popery,  indicted   the   Duke    of   York 
as  a  recusant,  and  rei">orted  the  Duchess  of  Portsmouth,  the 
king's  new  mistress,  as  "  a  common  neusance."     The 
extreme  agitation  was  successful ;  and  in  two  succes-     I68O. 
sive  parliaments,  in^each   of  which   men  who  were     and 
at  heart  dissenters  had  the  majority,  the  bill  for  ex-    mScIi. 
eluding  the  Duke  of  York  was  passed  by  triumphant 
votes  in  the  house  of  commons,  and  defeated  only  by  the 
lords  and  the  king. 

But  the  public  mind,  firm,  even  to  superstition,  in  its  re- 
spect for  hereditary  succession,  was  not  ripe  for  tlie  measure 
of  exclusion.  After  less  than  a  week's  session,  Charles  II. 
dissolved  the  last  parliament  of  his  reign,  and  ap- 
pealed to  the  people  against  his  enemies.  To  avoid  March 
the  charge  of  despotism,  he  still  hanged  a  papist  ^^^'^'^' 
whom  he  knew  to  be  innocent ;  and  his  friends  declared 
him  to  have  no  other  purpose  than  to  resist  the  arbitrary 
sway  of  "  a  republican  prelacy,"  and  the  installation  of  the 
multitude  in  the  chair  of  infallibility.     The  ferocious  in- 


166      *  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVL 

tolerance  which  had  sustained  the  popish  plot  lost  its 
credit ;  men  dreaded  anarchy  and  civil  war  more  than  they 
feared  the  royal  prerogative. 

The  king  had  already  exercised  the  power  of  rest**icting 
the  liberty  of  the  press  ;  through  judges,  who  held  places 
at  his  pleasure,  he  was  supreme  in  the  courts ;  omitting  to 
convoke  parliament,  he  made  himself  irresponsible  to  the 
people  ;  pursuing  a  judicial  warfare  against  city  charters 
and  the  monopolies  of  boroughs,  he  reformed  many  real 
abuses,  but  at  the  same  time  subjected  the  corporations  to 
his  influence.  Controlling  the  appointment  of  sheriffs,  he 
controlled  the  nomination  of  juries ;  and  thus,  in  the  last 
three  or  four  years  of  the  reign  of  King  Charles  II.,  the 
government  of  England  was  administered  as  an  absolute 
monarchy.  An  "  association  "  against  the  Duke  of  York 
could  not  succeed  among  a  calculating  aristocracy,  as  the 
Scottish  covenant  had  done  among  a  faithful  people ;  and, 
on  its  disclosure  and  defeat,  the  voluntary  exile  of  Shaftes- 
bury excited  no  plebeian  regret.  No  deep  popular  indigna- 
tion  attended  Russell  to  the  scaffold  ;  and  on  the  day  on 
which  the  purest  martyr  to  aristocratic  liberty  laid  his  head 
on  the  block,  the  university  of  Oxford  decreed  absolute 
obedience  to  be  the  character  of  the  church  of  England, 
while  parts  of  the  writings  of  Knox,  Milton,  and  Baxter 
were  pronounced  "false,  seditious,  and  impious,  heretical 
and  blasphemous,  infamous  to  the  Christian  religion, 
■^^'rj^  and  destructive  of  all  government,"  and  were  there- 
fore ordered  to  be  burnt.  Algernon  Sydney  followed 
to  the  scaffold. 

Thus  liberty,  which  at  the  restoration  excited  loyalty, 
banished  from  among  the  people,  made  its  way  through 
rakes  and  the  king's  mistress  into  the  royal  councils. 
Driven  from  the  palace,  it  appealed  to  parliament  and  the 
people,  and  won  power  through  the  frenzied  antipathy  to 
Roman  Catholics.  Exiled  from  parliament  by  their  dis- 
solution, from  the  people  by  the  ebb  of  excitement,  it 
concealed  itself  in  an  aristocratic  association  and  a  secret 
aristocratic  council.  Chased  from  its  hiding-place  by  dis- 
closures and  executions,  and  having  no  hope  from  parlia- 


1685.  THE  EEVOLUTION  OF  1688.  167 

ment,  people,  the  press,  tlie  courts  of  justice,  the  king,  it  left 
the  soil  of  England,  and  fled  for  refuge  to  the  country  of 
the  Prince  of  Orange. 

How  entirely  monarchy  had  triumphed  in  England.  1685. 
appeared  on  the  death  of  Charles  II.  His  brother, 
whom  the  commons,  in  three  successive  parliaments,  had 
desired  to  exclude,  ascended  the  throne  without  opposition, 
continued  taxes  by  his  prerogative,  easily  suppressed  the 
insurrection  of  Monmouth,  convened  a  parliament,  under 
the  new  system  of  charters  so  subservient  that  it  bowed  its 
back  to  royal  chastisement ;  while  the  "  Presbyterian  ras- 
cals," the  troublesome  Calvinists,  who,  from  the  days  of 
Edward  VI.,  had  kept  English  liberty  alive,  were  consigned 
to  the  courts  of  law.  "  Richard,"  said  Jeffries  to  Baxter, 
*'  Richard,  thou  art  an  old  knave ;  thou  hast  written  books 
enough  to  load  a  cart,  every  one  as  full  of  sedition  as  an 
egg  is  full  of  meat.  I  know  thou  hast  a  mighty  party,  and 
a  great  many  of  the  brotherhood  are  waiting  in  corners  to 
see  what  will  become  of  their  mighty  Don  ;  but,  by  the 
grace  of  Almighty  God,  I'll  crush  you  all ;"  and  the  docile 
jury  found  "  the  main  incendiary  "  guilty  of  sedition.  Fac- 
tion had  ebbed ;  "  rogues "  had  grown  out  of  fashion  ; 
there  was  nothing  left  for  them  but  to  "  thrive  in  the  plan- 
tations."    The  royalist  Dryden  wrote  : 

Truth  is,  the  land  with  saints  is  so  run  o'er, 
And  every  age  produces  such  a  store. 
That  now  there's  need  of  two  New  Englands  more. 
But  the  tide  of  liberty  was  still  swelling,  and  soon  wafted 
the  "saints"  to  their  partial  deliverance. 

To  understand  fully  the  revolution  which  followed,  it 
must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  great  mass  of  dissenters 
were  struggling  for  liberty  ;  but,  checked  by  the  memory 
of  the  disastrous  issue  of  the  previous  revolution,  they 
ranged  themselves,  with  deliberate  moderation,  under  the 
more  liberal  party  of  the  aristocracy.  Of  Cromwell's  army, 
the  officers  had  been,  "  for  the  most  part,  the  meanest  sort 
of  men,  even  brewers,  cobblers,  and  other  mechanics  ; " 
recruits  for  the  camp  of  William  of  Orange  were  led  by 
bishops  and  the  high  nobility.     There  was  a  vast  popular 


168  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVL 

movement,  but  it  was  subordinate  ;  the  proclamation  of  the 
prince  took  notice  of  the  people  only  as  "  followers  "  of  the 
gentry.  Yet  the  Eevolution  of  1688  is  due  to  the  dissent- 
ers quite  as  much  as  to  the  whig  aristocracy  ;  to  Baxter 
hardly  less  than  to  Shaftesbury.  It  is  the  consummation  of 
the  collision  which,  in  the  days  of  Henry  YIII.  and  Edward, 
began  between  the  churchmen  and  the  Puritans,  between 
those  who  invoked  religion  on  the  side  of  passive  obedience, 
and  those  who  esteemed  religion  superior  to  man,  and  held 
resistance  to  tyranny  a  Christian  duty.  If  the  whig  aris- 
tocracy looked  to  the  stadholder  of  aristocratic  Holland  as 
the  protector  of  their  liberties,  Baxter  and  the  Presbyterians 
saw  in  William  the  Calvinist  their  tolerant  avenger. 

Of  the  two  great  aristocratic  parties  which  led  the 
politics  of  England,  both  respected  the  established  British 
constitution.  But  the  tory  opposed  reform,  and  leaned  to 
the  past ;  he  defended  his  privileges  against  the  encroach- 
ments of  advancing  civilization.  The  bishops,  claiming 
for  themselves  a  divine  right  by  direct  succession,  were  his 
natural  allies  ;  and  to  assert  the  indefeasible  rights  of  the 
bishops,  of  the  aristocracy,  and  of  the  king,  against  dissent- 
ers, republicans,  and  whigs,  was  his  whole  purpose. 

The  whigs  were  also  a  party  of  the  aristocracy,  bent  on 
the  preservation  of  their  privileges  against  the  encroach- 
ments of  the  monarch.  In  an  age  that  demanded  liberty, 
the  whigs,  scarce  proposing  new  enfranchisements,  gathered 
up  every  liberty,  feudal  or  popular,  known  to  English  law, 
and  sanctioned  by  the  fictitious  compact  of  prescription.  In 
a  period  of  progress  in  the  enfranchisement  of  classes,  they 
sliared  political  influence  with  the  merchants  and  bankers  ; 
in  ,an  age  of  religious  sects,  they  embraced  the  more  mod- 
erate and  liberal  of  the  church  of  England,  and  those  of  the 
dissenters  whose  dissent  was  the  least  glaring  ;  in  an  age 
of  speculative  inquiry,  they  favored  freedom  of  the  press. 
How  vast  was  the  party  is  evident,  since  it  cherished  among 
its  numbers  men  so  opposite  as  Shaftesbury  and  Sydney,  as 
Locke  and  Baxter. 

These  tv\^o  parties  embraced  almost  all  the  wealth  and 
learning  of  England.     But  there  was  a  third  party  of  those 


1686.  THE  EEVOLUTION  OF  1688.  169 

v^'ho  were  pledged  to  "  seek  and  love  and  chuse  the  best 
things."  They  insisted  that  all  penal  statutes  and  tests 
should  be  abolished  ;  that,  for  all  classes  of  non-conformists, 
whether  Roman  Catholics  or  dissenters,  for  the  plebeian 
Beets,  "the  less  noble  and  more  clownish  sort  of  people," 
"the  unclean  kind,"  room  should  equally  be  made  in  the 
English  ark ;  that  the  church  of  England,  satisfied  with  its 
estates,  should  give  up  jails,  whips,  halters,  and  gibbets, 
and  cease  to  plough  the  deep  furrows  of  persecution ;  that 
the  concession  of  equal  freedom  would  give  strength  to  the 
state,  security  to  the  prince,  content  to  the  multitude,  wealth 
to  the  country,  and  would  fit  England  for  its  ofiice  of  assert- 
ing European  liberty  against  the  ambition  of  France ;  that 
reason,  natural  right,  and  public  interest  demanded  a  glo- 
rious magna  charta  for  intellectual  freedom,  even  though 
the  grant  should  be  followed  by  "  a  dissolution  of  the  great 
corporation  of  conscience."  These  were  the  views  which 
were  advocated  by  William  Penn  against  what  he  calls 
"the  prejudices  of  his  times  ;  "  and  which  overwhelmed  his 
name  with  obloquy  as  a  friend  to  tyranny  and  a  Jesuit 
priest  in  disguise. 

But  the  easy  issue  of  the  contest  grew  out  of  a  legs. 
division  in  the  monarchical  party  itself.  James  11.  ^^^^' 
could  not  comprehend  the. value  of  freedom  or  the  obliga- 
tion of  law.  The  writ  of  habeas  corpus  he  esteemed  incon- 
sistent with  monarchy,  and  "  a  great  misfortune  to  the 
people."  A  standing  army,  and  the  terrors  of  corrupt 
tribunals,  were  his  dependence ;  he  delighted  in  military 
parades;  swayed  by  his  confessor,  he  dispensed  with  the 
laws,  multiplied  Catholic  chapels,  rejoiced  in  the  revoca- 
tion of  the  edict  of  Nantes,  and  sought  to  intrust  civil 
and  military  power  to  the  hands  of  Roman  Catholics. 

The  bishops  had  unanimously  voted  against  his  exclusion  ; 
and,  as  the  badge  of  the  church  of  England  was  obedience, 
he  for  a  season  courted  the  alliance  of  "  the  fairest  of  the 
spotted  kind."  To  win  her  favor  for  Roman  Catholics,  he 
was  willing  to  persecute  Protestant  dissenters.  This  is  the 
period  of  the  influence  of  Rochester. 

The  church  of  England  refused  the  alliance.     The  king 


ITO  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVL 

would  now  put  no  confidence  in  any  zealous  Protes- 
iS       tant ;  lie  applauded  the  bigotry  of  Louis  XIV.,  from 

whom  he  solicited  money.  "  I  hope,"  said  he,  "  the 
king  of  France  will  aid  me,  and  that  we  together  shall  do 
great  things  for  religion  ; "  and  the  established  church  be- 
,came  the  object  of  his  implacable  hatred.  "  Her  day  of  grace 
was  past."  The  royal  favor  was  withheld,  that  she  might 
silently  waste  and  dissolve  like  snows  in  spring.  To  dimin- 
ish her  numbers,  and  apparently  from  no  other  motive,  he 
granted  —  what  Sunderland  might  have  done  from  indiffer- 
ence, and  Penn  from  love  of  justice  —  equal  franchises  to 
every  sect;  to  the  powerful  Calvinist  and  to  the  "puny" 
Quaker,  to  Anabaptists  and  Independents,  and  "  all  the 
wild  increase  "  which  unsatisfied  inquiry  could  generate. 
The  declaration  of  indulgence  was  esteemed  a  death-blow 
to  the  church,  and  a  forerunner  of  the  reconciliation  of 
England  to  Rome.  The  franchises  of  Oxford  were  invaded, 
that  Catholics  might  share  in  its  endowments ;  the  bishops 
were  imprisoned,  because  they  would  not  publish  in  their 
churches  the  declaration,  of  which  the  purpose  was  their 
defeat;  and,  that  the  system  of  tyranny  might  be  perpetu- 
ated. Heaven,  as  the  monarch  believed,  blessed  his  pious 
pilgrimage  to  St.  Winifred's  Well  by  the  pregnancy  of  his 
wife  and  the  birth  of  a  son.  The  party  of  prerogative  was 
trampled  under  foot ;  and,  in  their  despair,  they  looked 
abroad  for  the  liberty  which  they  themselves  had  assisted 
to  exile.  The  obedient  church  of  England  set  the  exam- 
ple of  rebellion.  Thus  are  the  divine  counsels  perfected. 
"What   think   you   now   of    predestination?"     demanded 

William,  as  he  landed  in  England.  Tories  took  the 
1688.       lead  in  inviting  the  Prince  of  Orange  to  save  the 

English  church  ;  the  whigs  joined  to  rescue  the  privi- 
leges of  the  nobility  ;  the  Presbyterians  rushed  eagerly  into 
the  only  safe  avenue  to  toleration ;  the  people  quietly  ac- 
quiesced. King  James  was  left  alone  in  his  palace.  His 
terrified  priests  escaped  to  the  continent ;  Sunderland  was 
always  false ;  his  confidential  friends  betrayed  him  ;  his 
daughter  Anno,  pleading  conscience,  proved  herself  one  of 
his  worst  enemies.     "  God  help  me,"  exclaimed  the  discon- 


1689.  THE  KEVOLUTION  OF  1688.  ITl 

solate  father,  bursting  into  tears,  "my  very  children  have 
forsaken  me ; "  and  his  grief  was  increased  by  losing  a  piece 
of  the  true  wood  of  the  cross,  that  had  belonged  to  Edward 
the  Confessor.  Paralyzed  by  the  imbecility  of  doubt,  and 
destitute  of  counsellors,  he  fled  beyond  the  sea.  Aided  by 
falsehoods,  the  Prince  of  Orange,  without  striking  a  blow, 
ascended  the  throne  of  his  father-in-law;  and  Mary,  by 
whose  letters  James  was  lulled  into  security,  came  over  to 
occupy  the  throne,  the  palace,  and  the  bed  of  her  father, 
and  sequester  the  inheritance  of  her  brother. 

The  great  news  of  the  invasion  of  England  and  the 
declaration  of  the  Prince  of  Orange  reached  Boston 
on  the  fourth  day  of  April,  1689.  The  messenger  1689. 
was  immediately  imprisoned  ;  but  his  message  could 
not  be  suppressed  ;  and  "  the  preachers  had  already  ma- 
tured the  evil  design"  of  a  revolution.  For  the  events 
that  followed  were  "  not  a  violent  passion  of  the  rabble, 
but  a  long-contrived  piece  of  wickedness." 

"  There  is  a  general  buzzing  among  the  people,  Apr.  i6. 
great  with  expectation  of  their  old  charter  or  they  know 
not  what :  "  such  was  the  ominous  message  of  Andros  to 
Brockholst,  with  orders  that  the  soldiers  should  be  ready 
for  action. 

About  nine  o'clock  of  the  morning  of  the  eigh- 
teenth, just  as  George,  the  commander  of  the  "  Rose  " 
frigate,  stepped  on  shore.  Green  and  the  Boston  ship-car- 
penters gathered  about  him  and  made  him  a  prisoner.  The 
town  took  the  alarm.  The  royalist  sheriffc*  endeavored  to 
quiet  the  multitude  ;  and  they  at  once  arrested  him.  They 
next  hastened  to  the  major  of  the  regiment,  and  demanded 
colors  and  drums.  He  resisted  ;  they  threatened.  The  crowd 
increased;  companies  form  under  Nelson,  Foster,  Water- 
houfse,  their  old  officers;  and  already  at  ten  they  seized 
Bullivant,  Foxcroft,  and  Ravenscraft.  Boys  ran  along  the 
streets  with  clubs ;  the  drums  beat ;  the  governor,  with  his 
creatures,  meeting  opposition  in  council,  withdrew  to  the 
fort  to  desire  a  conference  with  the  ministers  and  two  or 
three  more.  The  conference  was  declined.  All  the  com- 
panies soon  rallied  at  the  town-house.     Just  then,  the  last 


172 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVL 


governor  of  the  colony,  in  office  when  the  charter  was 
abrogated,  Simon  Bradstreet,  glorious  with  the  dignity  of 
fourscore  years  and  seven,  one  of  the  early  emigrants,  a 
magistrate  in  1630,  whose  experience  connected  the  oldest 
generation  with  the  new,  drew  near  the  town-house,  and 
was  received  by  a  great  shout  from  the  freemen.  The  old 
magistrates  were  reinstated,  as  a  council  of  safety;  the 
town  rose  in  arms,  "with  the  most  unanimous  resolution 
that  ever  inspired  a  people ; "  and  a  declaration  read  from 
the  balcony  defended  the  insurrection  as  a  duty  to  God  and 
the  country.  "  We  commit  our  enterprise,"  it  was  added, 
"  to  Him  who  hears  the  cry  of  the  oppressed,  and  advise 
all  our  neighbors,  for  whom  we  have  thus  ventured  our- 
selves, to  joyn  with  us  in  prayers  and  all  just  actions  for 
the  defence  of  the  land." 

On  Charlestown  side,  a  thousand  soldiers  crowded  to- 
gether ;  and  there  would  have  been  more  of  them  if 
needed.  The  governor,  vainly  attempting  to  escape  to  the 
frigate,  was,  with  his  creatures,  compelled  to  seek  protec- 
tion by  submission  ;  through  the  streets  where  he  had  first 
1689.  displayed  his  scarlet  coat  and  arbitrary  commission, 
Apr.  19.  i^Q  jjjj(j  jjig  fellows  were  marched  to  the  town-house, 
and  thence  to  prison. 

On  the  next  day,  the  country  people  came  swarming 
•across  the  Charlestown  and  Chelsea  ferries,  headed  by 
Shepherd,  a  schoolmaster  of  Lynn.  All  the  cry  was  against 
Andros  and  Randolph.  The  castle  was  taken  ;  the  frigate 
was  mastered  ;  the  fortifications  were  occupied. 

How  should  a  new  government  be  instituted  ?  Town- 
meetings,  before  news  had  arrived  of  the  proclamation  of 
William  and  Mary,  were  held  throughout  the  colony.  Of 
fifty-four  towns,  forty  certainly,  probably  more,  voted   to 

reassume   the    old    charter.      Representatives   were 
May  22.  choseii ;  and  once  more  Massachusetts  assembled  in 

general  court. 

It  is  but  a  short  ride  from  Boston  to  Plymouth. 
Apr.  22.  Already  on  the  twenty-second  of  April,  Nathaniel 

Clark,  the   agent  of  Andros,  was  in  jail ;    Hinckley 
resumed  the  government,  and  the  children  of  the  pilgrims 


1690.  THE  EEVOLUTION  OF  1688.  173 

renewed  the  constitution  which  had  been  unanimously  signed 
in  the  "  Mayflower."  But  not  one  of  the  fathers  of  the  old 
colony  remained  alive.  John  Alden,  the  last  survivor  of 
the  signers,  famed  for  his  frugal  habits,  and  an  arm  before 
which  forests  had  bowed,  had  been  gathered  in  death. 

The  royalists  had  pretended  that  "  the  Quaker  grandees  " 
of  Rhode  Island  had  imbibed  nothing  of  Quakerism  but  its 
indifference  to  forms,  and  did  not  even  desire  a  res- 
toration of  the  charter.  On  May-day,  their  usual  ^^y\, 
election  day,  the  inhabitants  and  freemen  poured  into 
Newport ;  and  the  "  democracie  "  published  to  the  world 
their  gratitude  "to  the  good  providence  of  God,  w^hich  had 
wonderfully  supported  their  predecessors  and  themselves 
through  more  than  ordinary  difficulties  and  hardships." 
"  We  take  it  to  be  our  duty,"  thus  they  continue,  "  to  lay 
hold  of  our  former  gracious  privileges,  in  our  charter  con- 
tained." And,  by  a  unanimous  vote,  the  officers,  whom 
Andros  had  displaced,  were  confirmed.  But  Walter  Clarke 
wavered.  For  nine  months  there  was  no  acknowledged 
chief  magistrate.  The  assembly,  accepting  Clarke's 
disclaimer,  elected  Almy.  Again  excuse  was  made.  yIT.%g. 
Did  no  one  dare  to  assume  responsibility?  All  eyes 
turned  to  one  of  the  old  Antinoraian  exiles,  the  more  than 
octogenarian,  Henry  Bull ;  and  the  fearless  Quaker,* true  to 
the  light  within,  employed  the  last  glimmerings  of  life 
to  restore  the  democratic  charter  of  Khode  Island.  Once 
more  its  free  government  is  organized  :  its  seal  is  renewed ; 
the  symbol,  an  anchor ;  the  motto,  Hope. 

Massachusetts  rose  in  arms,  and  perfected  its  revolution 
without  concert ;  "  the  amazing  news  did  soon  fly  like 
lightning;"  and  the  people  of  Connecticut  spurned  the  gov- 
ernment, which  Andros  had  appointed,  and  which  they  bad 
always  feared  it  was  a  sin  to  obey.  The  charter  was 
resumed;  an  assembly  was  convened;  and,  in  spite  May 9. 
of  the  Finis  of  Andros,  new  chapters  were  begun  in 
the  records  of  freedom.  Suffolk  county,  on  Long  Island, 
rejoined  Connecticut. 

New  York  shared  the  impulse,  but  with  less  unanimity. 
"  The  Dutch  plot  "  was  matured  by  Jacob  Leisler,  a  man  of 


1*^4  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVI. 

energy,  but  passionate  and  ill-educated,  and  not  possessed  of 
that  happy  natural  sagacity  which  elicits  a  rule  of  action 
from  its  own  instincts.  But  the  common  people  among  the 
Dutch,  led  by  Leisler  and  his  son-in-law  Milborne,  insisted 
on  proclaiming  the  stadholder  king  of  England. 

In  New  Jersey  there  was  no  insurrection.  The  inhab- 
itants were  unwilling  to  invoke  the  interference  of  the  pro- 
prietaries. There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that,  in  the  several 
towns,  officers  were  chosen,  as  before,  by  the  inhabitants 
themselves,  to  regulate  all  local  affairs ;  while  the 
1689.  provincial  government,  as  established  by  James  II., 
fell  with  Andros.  We  have  already  seen  that  Mary- 
land had  perfected  a  revolution,  in  which  Protestant  intol- 
erance, as  well  as  popular  liberty,  had  acted  its  part.  The 
passions  of  the  Mohawks,  also,  were  kindled  by  the  certain 
prospect  of  an  ally ;  they  chanted  their  loudest  war-song, 
and  prepared  to  descend  on  Montreal. 

Thus  did  a  popular  insurrection,  beginning  at  Boston, 
extend  to  the  Chesapeake  and  to  the  wilderness.  This 
New  England  revolution  "  made  a  great  noise  in  the  world." 
Its  object  was  Protestant  liberty ;  and  William  and  Mary, 
the  Protestant  sovereigns,  were  proclaimed  w^ith  rejoicings 
such  as  America  had  never  before  known  in  its  intercourse 
with  England. 

Could  it  be  that  America  was  deceived  in  her  confidence  ; 
that  she  had  but  substituted  the  absolute  sovereignty  of 
parliament,  which  to  her  would  prove  the  sovereignty  of  a 
commercial  as  well  as  a  landed  aristocracy,  for  the  despot- 
ism of  the  Stuarts  ?  Boston  was  the  centre  of  the  revolu- 
tion which  now  spread  to  the  Chesapeake  ;  in  less  than  a 
century,  it  will  commence  a  revolution  for  humanity,  and 
rouse  a  spirit  of  power  to  emancipate  the  world. 


Chap.  XXVn.         THE  RESULT  THUS  EAR.  1T5 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

THE     RESULT     THUS     TAR. 

Thus  have  we  traced,  almost  exclusively  from  contempo- 
rary documents  and  records,  the  colonization  of  the  twelve 
oldest  states  of  our  Union.  At  the  period  of  the  great 
European  Revolution  of  1688,  they  contained  not  very 
many  beyond  two  hundred  thousand  inhabitants,  of  whom 
Massachusetts,  with  Plymouth  and  Maine,  may  have  had 
forty-four  thousand  ;  New  Hampshire  and  Rhode  Island, 
with  Providence,  each  six  thousand  ;  Connecticut,  from 
seventeen  to  twenty  thousand ;  that  is,  all  ISTew  England, 
seventy-five  thousand  souls ;  New  York,  not  less  than 
twenty  thousand ;  New  Jersey,  half  as  many;  Pennsyl- 
vania and  Delaware,  perhaps  twelve  thousand;  Mary- 
land, twenty-five  thousand ;  Virginia,  fifty  thousand,  or 
more  ;  and  the  two  Carolinas,  which  then  included  the 
soil  of  Georgia,  probably  not  less  than  eight  thousand 
souls. 

The  emigration  of  the  fathers  of  these  twelve  common- 
wealths, with  the  planting  of  the  principles  on  which  they 
rested,  though,  like  the  introduction  of  Christianity  into 
Rome,  but  little  regarded  by  contemporary  writers,  was  the 
most  momentous  event  of  the  seventeenth  century.  The 
elements  of  our  country,  such  as  she  exists  to-day,  were 
already  there. 

Of  the  institutions  of  the  Old  World,  monarchy  had  jio 
motive  to  emigrate,  and  was  present  only  by  its  shadow  ; 
in  the  proprietary  governments,  by  the  shadow  of  a  shadow. 
The  feudal  aristocracy  had  accomplished  its  mission  in 
Europe ;  it  could  not  gain  new  life  among  the  equal  condi- 
tions of  the  wilderness ;  in  at  least  four  of  the  twelve 
colonies,  it  did  not  originally  exist  at  all,  and,  in  the  rest, 
had  scarcely  a  monument  except  in  the  forms  of  holding 


176  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVIL 

property.  Priestcraft  did  not  emigrate ;  by  the  steadfast 
attraction  of  interest,  it  was  retained  in  the  Old  World  ;  to 
the  forests  of  America,  religion  came  as  a  companion ;  the 
American  mind  never  bowed  to  an  idolatry  of  forms ;  and 
there  was  not  a  prelate  in  the  whole  English  part  of  the 
continent.  The  municipal  corporations  of  the  European 
commercial  world,  the  close  intrenchments  of  burghers 
against  the  landed  aristocracy,  could  not  be  transferred  to 
our  shores,  where  no  baronial  castles  demanded  the  con- 
certed opposition  of  guilds.  Nothing  came  from  Europe 
but  a  free  people.  The  people,  separating  itself  from  all 
other  elements  of  previous  civilization ;  the  people,  self- 
coniiding  and  industrious ;  the  people,  wise  by  all  traditions 
that  favored  popular  happiness,  —  the  people  alone  broke 
away  from  European  influence,  and  in  the  New  World  laid 
the  foundations  of  our  republic; 

Plebeian,  though  ingenuous  the  stock 
From'  which  her  graces  and  her  honors  sprung. 
The  people  alone  were  present  in  poAver.  Like  Moses,  as  they 
said  of  themselves,  they  had  escaped  from  Egyptian  bond- 
age to  the  wilderness,  that  God  might  there  give  them  the 
pattern  of  the  tabernacle.  Like  the  favored  evangelist,  the 
exiles,  in  their  western  Patmos,  listened  to  the  angel  that 
dictated  the  new  gospel  of  freedom.  Overwhelmed  in 
Europe,  popular  liberty,  like  the  fabled  fountain  of  the 
sacred  Arethusa,  gushed  forth  profusely  in  remoter  fields. 
Of  the  nations  of  the  European  world,  the  chief  emi- 
gration was  from  that  Germanic  race  most  famed  for  the 
love  of  personal  independence.  The  immense  majority  of 
American  families  were  not  of  "  the  high  folk  of  Nor- 
mandie,"  but  were  of  "the  low  men,"  who  were  Saxons. 
This  is  true  of  New  England  ;  it  is  true  of  the  south.  The 
Virginians  were  Anglo-Saxons  in  the  woods  again,  with 
the  inherited  culture  and  intelligence  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  "  The  major  part  of  the  house  of  burgesses  now 
consisted  of  Virginians  that  never  saw  a  town."  The 
Anglo-Saxon  mind,  in  its  serenest  nationality,  neither  dis- 
torted by  fanaticism,  nor  subdued  by  superstition,  nor 
wounded   by  persecution,  nor   excited   by  new  ideas,  but 


Chap.  XXVII.         THE  RESULT   THUS  FAR.  177 

fondly  cherishing  the  active  instinct  for  personal  freedom, 
Becure  possession,  and  legislative  power,  such  as  belonged 
to  it  before  the  Reformation,  and  existed  independent  of 
the  Reformation,  had  made  its  dwelling-place  in  the  empire 
of  Powhatan.  With  consistent  firmness  of  character,  the 
Virginians  welcomed  representative  assemblies;  displaced 
an  unpopular  governor;  at  the  overthrow  of  monarchy, 
established  the  freest  government ;  rebelled  against  the 
politics  of  the  Stuarts ;  and,  uneasy  at  the  royalist  prin- 
ciples which  prevailed  in  its  forming  aristocracy,  soon 
manifested  the  tendency  of  the  age  at  the  polls. 

The  colonists,  including  their  philosophy  in  their  religion, 
as  the  people  up  to  that  time  had  always  done,  were  neither 
skeptics  nor  sensualists,  but  Christians.  The  school  that 
bows  to  the  senses  as  the  sole  interpreter  of  truth  had  little 
share  in  colonizing  our  America.  The  colonists  from  Maine 
to  Carolina,  the  adventurous  companions  of  Smith,  the  pro- 
scribed Puritans  that  freighted  the  fleet  of  Winthrop,  the 
Quaker  outlaws  that  fled  from  jails  with  a  Newgate  prisoner 
as  their  sovereign,  —  all  had  faith  in  God  and  in  the  soul. 
The  system  which  had  been  revealed  in  Judea,  —  the  system 
which  combines  and  perfects  the  symbolic  wisdom  of  the 
Orient  and  the  reflective  genius  of  Greece,  —  the  system, 
conforming  to  reason,  yet  kindling  enthusiasm ;  always 
hastening  reform,  yet  always  conservative;  proclaiming 
absolute  equality  among  men,  yet  not  suddenly  abolishing 
the  unequal  institutions  of  society;  guaranteeing  absolute 
freedom,  yet  invoking  the  inexorable  restrictions  of  duty ; 
in  the  highest  degree  theoretical,  and  yet  in  the  highest 
degree  practical ;  awakening  the  inner  man  to  a  conscious- 
ness of  his  destiny,  and  yet  adapted  with  exact  harmony 
to  the  outward  world;  at  once  divine  and  humane,  —  this 
system  was  professed  in  every  part  of  our  widely  extended 
country,  and  cradled  our  freedom. 

Our  fathers  were  not  only  Christians ;  they  were,  even  in 
Maryland  by  a  vast  majority,  elsewhere  almost  unanimously, 
Protestants.  Now  the  Protestant  Reformation,  considered 
in  its  largest  influence  on  politics,  was  the  awakening  of 
the  common  people  to  freedom  of  mind. 

VOL.  11.  12 


178  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVII. 

During  the  decline  of  the  Roman  empire,  the  oppressed 
invoked  the  power  of  Christianity  to  resist  the  supremacy 
of  brute  force  ;  and  the  merciful  priest  assumed  the  office  of 
protector.  The  tribunes  of  Rome,  appointed  by  the  people, 
had  been  declared  inviolable  by  the  popular  vote ;  the  new 
tribunes  of  humanity,  deriving  their  office  from  religion, 
and  ordained  by  religion  to  a  still  more  venerable  sanctity, 
defended  the  poor  man's  house  against  lust  by  the  sacra- 
ment of  marriage  ;  restrained  arbitrary  passion  by  a  menace 
of  the  misery  due  to  sin  unrepented  and  unatoned ;  and 
taught  respect  for  the  race  by  sprinkling  every  new-born 
child  with  the  water  of  life,  confirming  every  youth,  bearing 
the  oil  of  consolation  to  every  death-bed,  and  sharing  freely 
with  every  human  being  the  consecrated  emblem  of  God 
present  with  man. 

But  from  protectors  priests  grew  to  be  usurpers.  Ex- 
pressing all  moral  truth  by  the  mysteries  of  symbols,  and 
reserving  to  themselves  the  administration  of  seven  sacra- 
ments, they  claimed  a  monopoly  of  thought,  and  exercised  an 
absolute  spiritual  dominion.  Human  bondage  was  strongly 
riveted ;  for  they  had  fastened  on  the  affections,  the  under- 
standing, and  the  reason.  Ordaining  their  own  successors, 
they  ruled  human  destiny  at  birth,  on  entering  active  life,  at 
marriage,  when  frailty  breathed  its  confession,  when  faith 
aspired  to  communion  with  God,  and  at  death. 

The  fortunes  of  the  human  race  are  embarked  in  a  life- 
boat, and  cannot  be  wrecked.  Mind  refuses  to  rest;  and 
active  freedom  is  a  necessary  condition  of  intelligent  exist- 
ence. The  instinctive  love  of  truth  could  warm  even  the 
scholastic  theologian ;  but  the  light  which  it  kindled  for 
him  was  oppressed  by  verbal  erudition,  and  its  flickering 
beams,  scarce  lighting  the  cell  of  the  solitary,  could  not  fill 
the  colonnade  of  the  cloister,  far  less  reach  the  busy  world. 

Sensualism  also  was  free  to  mock  superstition.  Scoffing 
infidelity  put  on  the  cardinal's  hat,  and  made  even  the 
Vatican  ring  with  ribaldry.  But  the  indifference  of  dis- 
soluteness has  no  creative  power ;  it  does  but  substitute  the 
despotism  of  the  senses  for  a  spiritual  despotism ;  it  never 
brought  enfranchisements  to  the  multitude. 


Chap.  XXVII.         THE   RESULT   THUS  FAR.  179 

The  feudal  aristocracy  resisted  spiritual  authority  by  the 
sword;  but  it  was  only  to  claim  greater  license  for  their 
own  violence.  Temporal  sovereigns,  jealous  of  a  power 
which  threatened  to  depose  the  unjust  prince,  were  ready 
to  set  prelacy  against  prelacy,  the  national  church  against 
the  Catholic  Church ;  but  it  was  only  to  assert  the  absolute 
liberty  of  despotism. 

By  slow  degrees,  the  students  of  the  humanities,  as  they 
were  called,  polished  scholars,  learned  lessons  of  freedom 
from  Grecian  and  Roman  example ;  but  they  hid  their 
patriotism  in  a  dead  language,  and  forfeited  the  claim  to 
higher  influence  and  enduring  fame  by  suppressing  truth, 
and  yielding  independence  to  the  interests  of  priests  and 
princes. 

Human  enfranchisement  could  not  advance  securely  but 
through  the  people ;  for  whom  philosophy  was  included  in 
religion,  and  religion  veiled  in  symbols.  There  had  ever 
been  within  the  Catholic  Church  men  who  preferred  truth 
to  forms,  justice  to  despotic  force.  "  Dominion,"  said 
Wyclift'e,  "  belongs  to  grace ; "  meaning,  as  I  believe,  that 
the  feudal  government,  which  rested  on  the  sword,  should 
yield  to  a  government  resting  on  moral  principles.  And  he 
knew  the  right  method  to  hasten  the  coming  revolution. 
"  Truth,"  he  asserted  with  wisest  benevolence,  "  truth  shines 
more  brightly  the  more  widely  it  is  diffused ; "  and,  catching 
the  plebeian  language  that  lived  on  the  lips  of  the  multitude, 
he  gave  England  the  Bible  in  the  vulgar  tongue.  A  timely 
death  could  alone  place  him  beyond  persecution ;  his  bones 
were  disinterred  and  burnt,  and  his  ashes  thrown  on  the 
waters  of  the  Avon.  But  his  fame  brightens  as  time  ad- 
vances ;  when  America  traces  the  lineage  of  her  intellectual 
freedom,  she  acknowledges  the  benefactions  of  Wycliffe. 

In  the  next  century,  a  kindred  spirit  emerged  in  Bohemia, 
and  tyranny,  quickened  by  the  nearer  approach  of  danger, 
summoned  John  Huss  to  its  tribunal,  set  on  his  head  a 
huge  paper  mitre  begrimed  with  hobgoblins,  permitted  the 
bishops  to  strip  him  and  curse  him,  and  consigned  one  of 
the  gentlest  and  purest  of  our  race  to  the  flames.  "  Holy 
simplicity !  "  exclaimed  he,  as  a  peasant  piled  fagots  on  the 


180  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVIL 

fire ;  still  preserving  faith  in  humanity  (the  Quakers  after- 
wards treasured  up  the  example),  though  its  noblest  instincts 
could  be  so  perverted;  and,  perceiving  the  only  mode 
through  which  reform  could  prevail,  he  gave  as  a  last  coun- 
sel to  his  multitude  of  followers :  "  Put  not  your  trust  in 
princes."  Of  the  descendants  of  his  Bohemian  disciples,  a 
few  certainly  came  to  us  by  way  of  Holland ;  his  example 
was  for  all. 

Years  are  as  days  in  the  providence  of  God  and  in  the 
progress  of  the  race.  After  long  waiting,  an  Augustine 
monk  at  Wittenberg,  who  had  seen  the  lewd  corruptions  of 
the  Roman  court  and  who  loathed  the  deceptions  of  a 
coarse  superstition,  brooded  in  his  cell  over  the  sins  of  his 
age  and  the  method  of  rescuing  conscience  from  the  domin- 
ion of  forms,  till  he  discovered  a  cure  for  these  vices  in  the 
simple  idea  of  justification  by  faith  alone.  With  this  prin- 
ciple, easily  intelligible  to  the  universal  mind,  and  spreading, 
like  an  epidemic,  widely  and  rapidly,  —  a  principle  strong 
enough  to  dislodge  every  superstition,  to  overturn  every 
tyranny,  to  enfranchise,  convert,  and  save  the  world,  —  he 
broke  the  wand  of  papal  supremacy,  scattered  the  lazars  of 
the  monasteries,  and  drove  the  penance  of  fasts,  and  the 
terrors  of  purgatory,  masses  for  the  dead,  and  indulgences 
for  the  living,  into  the  paradise  of  fools.  That  his  principle 
contained  a  democratic  revolution,  Luther  saw  clearly ;  he 
acknowledged  that  "the  rulers  and  the  lawyers  needed  a 
reformer ; "  but  he  "  could  not  hope  that  they  would  soon 
get  a  wise  one,"  and  in  a  stormy  age,  leaving  to  futurity  its 
office,  accepted  shelter  from  feudal  sovereigns.  "  It  is  a 
heathenish  doctrine,"  such  was  his  compromise  with  princes, 
"  that  a  wicked  ruler  may  be  deposed."  "  Do  not  pipe  to 
the  populace,  for  it  anyhow  delights  in  running  mad." 
"  God  lets  rogues  rule  for  the  people's  sin."  "  A  crazy  pop- 
ulace is  a  desperate,  cursed  thing  ;  a  tyrant  is  the  right  clog 
to  tie  on  that  dog's  neck."  And  yet,  adds  Luther,  "  I  have 
no  word  of  comfort  for  the  usurers  and  scoundrels  among 
the  aristocracy,  whose  vices  make  the  common  people  es- 
teem the  whole  aristocracy  to  be  out  and  out  worthless." 
And  he  praised  the  printing-press,  as  the  noblest  gift  of 


Chap.  XXVII.         THE  RESULT   THUS  FAE.  181 

human  genius.  He  forbade  priests  and  bishops  to  make 
laws  how  men  shall  believe ;  for,  said  he,  "  man's  authority- 
stretches  neither  to  heaven  nor  to  the  soul."  Nor  did  he 
leave  Truth  to  droop  in  a  cloister  or  wither  in  a  palace,  but 
carried  her  forth  in  her  freedom  to  the  multitude  ;  and, 
when  tyrants  ordered  the  German  peasantry  to  deliver  up 
their  Saxon  New  Testament,  "  No,"  cried  Luther,  "  not  a 
single  leaf."  He  pointed  out  the  path  in  which  civilization 
should  travel,  though  he  could  not  go  on  to  the  end  of  the 
journey.  In  him,  freedom  of  mind  was  like  the  morning 
sun,  as  it  still  struggles  with  the  sickly  dews  and  vanishing 
spectres  of  darkness. 

In  pursuing  the  history  of  our  country,  we  shall  hereafter 
meet  in  the  Lutheran  kingdom  of  Prussia,  of  which  the 
dynasty  had  become  Calvinistic,  at  one  time  an  active  ally, 
at  another  a  neutral  friend.  The  direct  influence  of  Luther- 
anism  on  America  was  inconsiderable.  New  Sweden  had 
the  faith  and  the  politics  of  the  German  reformer;  no 
democratic  ideas  distracted  its  single-minded  loyalty. 

As  the  New  World  sheltered  neither  bishops  nor  princes, 
in  respect  to  political  opinion,  the  Anglican  church  in  Vir- 
ginia was  but  an  enfranchisement  from  popery,  favoring 
humanity  and  freedom.  The  inhabitants  of  Virginia  were 
conformists  after  the  pattern  of  Sandys  and  of  Southamp- 
ton, rather  than  of  Whitgift  and  Laud.  Of  themselves  they 
asked  no  questions  about  the  surplice,  and  never  wore  the 
badge  of  non-resisting  obedience. 

The  meaner  and  more  ignoble  the  party,  the  more  general 
and  comprehensive  are  its  principles ;  for  none  but  princi- 
ples of  universal  freedom  can  reach  the  meanest  conditionr~%( 
The  serf  defends  the  widest  philanthropy ;  for  that  alone 
can  break  his  bondage.  The  plebeian  sect  of  Anabaptists, 
"the  scum  of  the  Reformation,"  with  greater  consistency 
than  Luther,  applied  the  doctrine  of  the  Reformation  to  the 
social  relations  of  life,  and  threatened  an  end  to  kingcraft, 
spiritual  dominion,  tithes,  and  vassalage.  The  party  was 
trodden  under  foot,  with  foul  reproaches  and  most  arrogant 
scorn;  and  its  history  is  written  in  the  blood  of  myriads 
of  the  German  peasantry;  but  its  principles,  safe  in  their 


182  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVIL 

immortality,  escaped  with  Roger  Williams  to  Providence ; 
and  his  colony  is  the  witness  that,  naturally,  the  paths  of  the 
Baptists  were  paths  of  freedom,  pleasantness,  and  peace. 

Luther  finished  his  mission  in  the  heart  of  Germany, 
under  the  safeguard  of  princes.  In  Geneva,  a  republic  on 
the  confines  of  France,  Italy,  and  Germany,  Calvin,  appeal- 
ing to  the  people  fi^r  support,  continued  the  career  of  en- 
franchisement by  planting  the  institutions  which  nursed  the 
minds  of  Rousseau  and  Necker. 

The  political  character  of  Calvinism,  which,  with  one 
consent  and  with  instinctive  judgment,  the  monarchs  of 
that  day,  except  that  of  Prussia,  feared  as  republicanism, 
and  which  Charles  II.  declared  a  religion  unfit  for  a  gen- 
tleman, is  expressed  in  a  single  word,  —  predestination. 
Did  a  proud  aristocracy  trace  its  lineage  through  genera- 
tions of  a  high-born  ancestry,  the  republican  reformer,  with 
a  loftier  pride,  invaded  the  invisible  world,  and  from  the 
book  of  life  brought  down  the  record  of  the  noblest  enfran- 
chisement, decreed  from  all  eternity  by  the  King  of  kings. 
His  converts  defied  the  opposing  world  as  a  world  of  repro- 
bates, whom  God  had  despised  and  rejected.  To  them  the 
senses  were  a  totally  depraved  foundation,  on  which  neither 
truth  nor  goodness  could  rest.  They  went  forth  in  confi- 
dence that  men  who  were  kindling  with  the  same  exalted 
instincts  would  listen  to  their  voice,  and  be  effectually 
*'  called  into  the  brunt  of  the  battle  "  by  their  side.  And, 
standing  serenely  amidst  the  crumbling  fabrics  of  centuries 
of  superstitions,  they  had  faith  in  one  another ;  and  the 
martyrdoms  of  Cambray,  the  fires  of  Smithfield,  the  surren- 
der of  benefices  by  two  thousand  non-conforming  Presby- 
terians, attest  their  perseverance. 

Such  was  the  system  which,  for  a  century  and  a  half, 
assumed  the  guardianship  of  liberty  for  the  English  world. 
"  A  wicked  tyrant  is  better  than  a  wicked  war,"  said  Luther, 
preaching  non-resistance ;  and  Cranmer  echoed  back :  "  God's 
people  are  called  to  render  obedience  to  governors,  although 
they  be  wicked  or  wrong-doers,  and  in  no  case  to  resist." 
English  Calvinism  reserved  the  right  of  resisting  tyranny. 
To  advance   intellectual  freedom,  Calvinism  denied,  abso- 


Chap.  XXVII.         THE   RESULT   THUS  FAR.  183 

lately  denied,  the  sacrament  of  ordination  ;  thus  breaking 
up  the  great  monopoly  of  priestcraft,  scattering  the  ranks  of 
superstition,  and  knowing  no  master,  mediator,  or  teacher 
but  the  eternal  reason.  "  Kindle  the  fire  before  my  face," 
said  Jerome  meekly,  as  he  resigned  himself  to  his  fate  ;  to 
quench  the  fires  of  persecution  for  ever,  Calvinism  resisted 
with  fire  and  blood,  and,  shouldering  the  musket,  proved, 
as  a  foot-soldier,  that,  on  the  field  of  battle,  the  invention  of 
gunpowder  had  levelled  the  plebeian  and  the  knight.  To 
restrain  absolute  monarchy  in  France,  in  Scotland,  in  Eng- 
land, it  allied  itself  with  the  party  of  the  past,  the  decaying 
feudal  aristocracy,  which  it  was  sure  to  outlive ;  to  protect 
itself  against  feudal  aristocracy,  it  infused  itself  into  the 
mercantile  class  and  the  inferior  gentry ;  to  secure  a  life  in 
the  public  mind,  in  Geneva,  in  Scotland,  wherever  it  gained 
dominion,  it  invoked  intelligence  for  the  people,  and  in 
every  parish  planted  the  common  school. 

In  an  age  of  commerce,  to  stamp  its  influence  on  the  'New 
World,  it  went  on  board  the  fleet  of  Winthrop,  and  was 
wafted  to  the  Bay  of  Massachusetts.  Is  it  denied  that 
events  follow  principles,  that  mind  rules  the  world  ?  The 
institutions  of  Massachusetts  were  the  exact  counterpart  of 
its  religious  system.  Calvinism  claimed  heaven  for  the 
elect ;  Massachusetts  gave  franchises  to  the  members  of  the 
visible  church.  Calvinism  rejected  the  herd  of  reprobates; 
Massachusetts  inexorably  disfranchised  churchmen,  royal- 
ists, and  all  world's  people.  Calvinism  overthrew  priest- 
craft ;  in  Massachusetts,  none  but  the  magistrate  could 
marry ;  the  brethren  could  ordain.  Calvinism  saw  in  good- 
ness infinite  joy,  in  evil  infinite  woe,  and,  recognising  no 
other  abiding  distinctions,  opposed  secretly  but  surely  he- 
reditary monarchy,  aristocracy,  and  bondage  ;  Massachusetts 
owned  no  king  but  the  King  of  heaven,  no  aristocracy  but 
of  the  redeemed,  no  bondage  but  the  hopeless,  infinite,  and 
eternal  bondage  of  sin.  Calvinism  invoked  intelligence 
against  Satan,  the  great  enemy  of  the  human  race ;  and  the 
farmers  and  seamen  of  Massachusetts  nourished  its  college 
with,  corn  and  strings  of  wampum,  and  in  every  village 
built  the  free  school.     Calvinism,  in  its  zeal  against  Rome, 


184  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVIL 

reverenced  the  Bible  even  to  idolatry;  and,  in  Massachu- 
setts, the  songs  of  Deborah  and  David  were  sung  with- 
out change ;  hostile  Algonkins,  like  the  Canaanites,  w^ere 
exterminated  or  enslaved  ;  and  wretched  innocents  were 
hanged,  because  it  was  written,  "The  witch  shall  die." 

"  Do  not  stand  still  with  Luther  and  Calvin,"  said  the 
father  of  the  pilgrims,  confident  in  human  advancement. 
From  Luther  to  Calvin,  there  was  progress  ;  from  Geneva 
to  New  England,  there  was  more.  Calvinism,  —  I  speak  of 
its  political  character,  in  an  age  when  politics  were  con- 
trolled by  religious  sects ;  I  pass  no  judgment  on  opinions 
which  relate  to  an  unseen  world,  —  Calvinism,  such  as  it 
existed,  in  opposition  to  prelacy  and  feudalism,  could  not 
continue  in  a  world  where  there  was  no  prelacy  to  combat, 
no  aristocracy  to  overthrow.  It  therefore  received  develop- 
ments which  were  imprinted  on  institutions.  It  migrated 
to  the  Connecticut ;  and  there,  forgetting  its  foes,  it  put 
off  its  armor  of  religious  pride.  "  You  go  to  receive  your 
reward,"  was  said  to  Hooker  on  his  death-bed.  "  I  go  to 
receive  mercy,"  was  his  reply.  For  predestination  Con- 
necticut substituted  benevolence.  It  hanged  no  Quakers, 
it  mutilated  no  heretics.  Its  early  legislation  is  the  breath 
of  reason  and  charity ;  and  Jonathan  Edwards  did  but  sum 
up  the  political  history  of  his  native  commonwealth  for  a 
century,  when,  anticipating,  and  in  his  consistency  excelling, 
Godwin  and  Bentham,  he  gave  Calvinism  its  political  eu- 
thanasia, by  declaring  virtue  to  consist  in  universal  love. 

In  Boston,  with  Henry  Vane  and  Anne  Hutchinson, 
*'  Calvinism  ran  to  seed ; "  and  the  seed  was  "  incorruptible." 
Election  implies  faith,  and  faith  freedom.  Claiming  the 
Spirit  of  God  as  the  companion  of  man,  the  Antinomians 
asserted  absolute  freedom  of  mind.  For  predestination 
they  substituted  consciousness.  "  If  the  ordinances  be  all 
taken  away,  Christ  cannot  be ; "  the  forms  of  truth  may 
perish ;  truth  itself  is  immortal.  "  God  will  be  ordinances 
to  us."  The  exiled  doctrine,  which  established  conscience 
as  the  highest  court  of  appeal,  fled  to  the  island  gift  of 
Miantonomoh  ;  and  the  records  of  Rhode  Island  are  the 
commentary  on  the  true  import  of  the  creed. 


Chap.  XXVII.         THE   RESULT   THUS  FAB.  185 

Faith  in  predestination  alone  divided  the  Antinomians 
from  the  Quakers.  Both  reverenced  and  obeyed  the  voice 
of  conscience  in  its  freedom.  The  near  resemblance  was 
perceived  so  soon  as  the  fame  of  George  Fox  reached  Amer- 
ica ;  and  the  principal  followers  of  Anne  Hutchinson,  Cod- 
dington,  Mary  Dyar,  Henry  Bull,  and  a  majority  of  the 
people,  avowed  themselves  to  be  Quakers. 

The  principle  of  freedom  of  mind,  first  asserted  for  the 
common  people,  under  a  religious  form,  by  Wycliffe,  had 
been  pursued  by  a  series  of  plebeian  sects,  till  it  at  last 
reached  a  perfect  development,  coinciding  with  the  highest 
attainment  of  European  philosophy. 

By  giving  a  welcome  to  every  sect,  America  w^as  safe 
against  narrow  bigotry.  At  the  same  time,  the  moral  unity 
of  the  forming  nation  was  not  impaired.  Of  the  various 
parties  into  which  the  Reformation  divided  the  people, 
each,  from  the  proudest  to  the  most  puny  sect,  rallied 
round  a  truth.  But,  as  truth  never  contradicts  itself,  the 
collision  of  sects  could  but  eliminate  error ;  and  the  Ameri- 
can mind,  in  the  largest  sense  eclectic,  struggled  for  univer- 
sality, while  it  asserted  freedom.  How  had  the  world  been 
governed  by  despotism  and  bigotry ;  by  superstition  and 
the  sword ;  by  the  ambition  of  conquest  and  the  pride  of 
privilege  !  And  now  the  happy  age  gave  birth  to  a  people 
which  was  to  own  no  authority  as  the  highest  but  the  free 
conviction  of  the  public  mind. 

Thus  had  Europe  given  to  America  her  sons  and  her 
culture.  She  was  the  mother  of  our  men,  and  of  the  ideas 
which  guided  them  to  greatness.  The  relations  of  our 
country  to  humanity  were  already  wider.  The  three  races, 
the  Caucasian,  the  Ethiopian,  and  the  American,  were  in 
presence  of  one  another  on  our  soil.  Would  the  red  man 
disappear  entirely  from  the  forests,  which  for  thousands  of 
years  had  sheltered  him  safely?  Would  the  black  man,  in 
the  end,  be  benefited  by  the  crimes  of  mercantile  avarice  ? 
At  the  close  of  the  middle  age,  the  Caucasian  race  was  in 
nearly  exclusive  possession  of  the  elements  of  civilization, 
while  the  Ethiopian  remained  in  insulated  barbarism.  No 
commerce  connected  it  with  Europe ;  no  intercourse  existed 


186 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVIL 


by  travel,  by  letters,  or  by  war;  it  was  too  feeble  to  at- 
tempt an  invasion  of  a  Christian  prince  or  an  Arab  dynasty. 
The  slave-trade  united  the  races  by  an  indissoluble  bond ; 
the  first  ship  that  brought  Africans  to  America  was  a  sure 
pledge  that,  in  due  time,  ships  from  the  New  World  would 
carry  the  equal  blessings  of  Christianity  to  the  burning 
plains  of  Nigritia,  that  descendants  of  Africans  would  toil 
for  the  benefits  of  European  civilization. 

That  America  should  benefit  the  African,  was  always  the 
excuse  for  the  slave-trade.  Would  America  benefit  Europe? 
The  probable  influence  of  the  New  World  on  the  Old  be- 
came a  prize  question  at  Paris  ;  but  not  one  of  the  writers 
divined  the  true  answer.  They  looked  for  it  in  commerce, 
in  mines,  in  natural  productions  ;  and  they  should  have 
looked  for  revolutions,  as  a  consequence  of  moral  power. 
The  Greek  colonists  planted  free  and  prosperous  cities ; 
and,  in  a  following  century,  each  metropolis,  envying  the 
happiness  of  its  daughters,  imitated  its  institutions,  and 
rejected  kings.  Rome,  a  nation  of  soldiers,  planted  colo- 
nies by  the  sword ;  and  retributive  justice  merged  its  liber- 
ties in  absolute  despotism.  The  American  colonists  founded 
their  institutions  on  popular  freedom,  and  "  set  an  example 
to  the  nations."  Already  the  plebeian  outcasts,  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  emigrants,  were  the  hope  of  the  world.  We  are  like 
the  Parthians,  said  Norton  in  Boston  ;  our  arrows  wound 
the  more  for  our  flight.  "  Jotham  upon  Mount  Gerizim  is 
bold  to  utter  his  apologue." 

We  have  written  the  origin  of  our  country  ;  we  are  now 
to  pursue  the  history  of  its  wardship.  The  relations  of  the 
rising  colonies,  the  representatives  of  democratic  freedom, 
are  chiefly  with  France  and  England ;  with  the  monarchy 
of  France,  which  was  the  representative  of  absolute  des- 
potism, having  subjected  the  three  estates  of  the  realm,  the 
clergy  by  a  treaty  with  the  pope,  feudalism  by  standing 
armies,  the  communal  institutions  by  executive  patronage 
and  a  vigorous  police ;  with  the  parliament  of  England, 
which  was  the  representative  of  aristocratic  liberties,  and 
had  ratified  royalty,  primogeniture,  corporate  charters,  the 
peerage,  tithes,  prelates,  prescriptive  franchises,  and  every 


Chap.  XXVII.         THE   RESULT   THUS  FAR.  187 

established  immunity  and  j^rivilege.  The  three  nations  and 
the  three  systems  were,  by  the  Revolution  of  1688,  brought 
into  direct  contrast  with  one  another.  At  the  same  time, 
the  English  world  was  lifted  out  of  theological  forms,  and 
entered  upon  the  career  of  commerce,  which  had  been  pre- 
pared by  the  navigation  acts  and  by  the  mutual  treaties  for 
colonial  monopoly  with  France  and  Spain.  The  period 
through  which  we  have  passed  shows  why  we  are  a  free 
people ;  the  coming  period  will  show  why  we  are  a  united 
people.  We  shall  have  no  tales  to  relate  of  more  adventure 
than  in  the  early  period  of  Virginia,  none  of  more  sublimity 
than  of  the  pilgrims  at  Plymouth.  But  we  are  about  to 
enter  on  a  wider  theatre ;  and,  as  we  trace  the  progress  of 
commercial  ambition  through  events  which  shook  the  globe 
from  the  wilds  beyond  the  Alleghanies  to  the  ancient 
abodes  of  civilization  in  Hindostan,  we  shall  still  see  that 
the  selfishness  of  evil  defeats  itself,  and  God  rules  in  the 
affairs  of  men. 


188  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XX  Vm. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

THE  SOUTHERN  STATES  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION. 

The  Stuarts  passed  from  the  throne  of  England.  The 
family,  distinguished  by  a  blind  resistance  to  popular 
opinion,  was  no  less  distinguished  by  misfortunes.  During 
their  separate  sovereignty  over  Scotland,  but  three  of  the 
race  escaped  a  violent  death."  The  first  of  them  who 
aspired  to  the  crown  of  Great  Britain  was  by  an  English 
sovereign  doomed  to  death  on  the  scaffold;  her  grandson 
was  beheaded  in  the  name  of  the  English  people.  The 
next  in  the  line,  long  a  needy  exile,  is  remembered  chiefly 
for  his  vices ;  and  James  II.  was  reduced  from  royalty  to 
beggary  by  the  conspiracy  of  his  own  children.  Yet  the 
New  World  has  monuments  of  the  Stuarts  ;  North  America 
acquired  its  British  colonies  during  their  rule,  and  towns, 
rivers,  headlands,  and  even  states  bear  their  names.  James 
I.  promoted  the  settlement  of  Virginia ;  a  timely  neglect 
fostered  New  England ;  the  favoritism  of  Charles  I.  opened 
the  way  for  religious  liberty  in  Maryland ;  Rhode  Island 
long  cherished  the  charter  which  it  won  from  Charles  II. ; 
the  honest  friendship  of  James  II.  favored  the  grants  which 
gave  liberties  to  Pennsylvania,  and  extended  them  to 
Delaware ;  the  crimes  of  the  dynasty  banished  to  our 
country  men  of  learning,  virtue,  and  fortitude.  Despotism 
rendered  benefits  to  freedom.  "The  wiisdom  of  God,"  as 
John  Knox  had  predicted,  "  compelled  the  very  malice  of 
Satan,  and  such  as  were  drowned  in  sin,  to  serve  to  his 
glory  and  the  profit  of  his  elect." 

Four  hundred  and  seventy-four  years  after  the  barons  at 
Runnymede  extorted  Magna  Charta  from  their  legitimate 
king,  the  aristocratic  Revolution  of  1688  established  for 
England  and  its  dominions  the  sovereignty  of  parliament 
and  the  supremacy  of  law.     Its  purpose  was  the  security  of 


Chap.  XXVIH.  THE  SOUTH  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.    189 

property  and  existing  franchises,  and  not  the  abolition  of 
privilege  or  the  equalization  of  political  power.  The  chiefs 
of  the  nobility,  who,  in  1640,  had  led  the  people  in  its 
struggle  for  liberty,  had,  from  the  passionate  enthusiasm 
of  "  a  generous  inexperience,"  been  hurried,  against  their 
design,  into  measures  which  their  interests  opposed.  Made 
circumspect  by  the  past,  the  renewed  contest  did  not  dis- 
turb their  prudence,  nor  triumph  impair  their  moderation. 
Avoiding  the  collisions  with  established  privileges  that 
spring  from  the  fanatical  exaggeration  of  abstract  principles, 
still  placing  the  hope  of  security  on  the  system  of  checks 
and  the  balance  of  opposing  powers,  they  made  haste  to 
finish  the  work  of  establishing  the  government.  The 
character  of  the  new  monarch  of  Great  Britain  could  mould 
its  policy,  but  not  its  constitution.  True  to  his  purposes, 
he  yet  wins  no  sympathy.  In  political  sagacity,  in  force  of 
will,  far  superior  to  the  English  statesmen  who  environed 
him ;  more  tolerant  than  his  ministers  or  his  parliaments, 
the  childless  man  seems  like  the  unknown  character  in 
algebra  which  is  introduced  to  form  the  equation,  and  dis- 
missed when  the  problem  is  solved.  In  his  person  thin  and 
feeble,  with  eyes  of  a  hectic  lustre,  of  a  temperament  in- 
clining to  the  melancholic,  in  conduct  cautious,  of  a  self- 
relying  humor,  with  abiding  impressions  respecting  men,  he 
sought  no  favor,  and  relied  for  success  on  his  own  inflexi- 
bility and  the  ripeness  of  his  designs.  Too  wise  to  be 
cajoled,  too  firm  to  be  complaisant,  no  address  could  sway 
his  resolve,  no  filial  respect  controlled  his  ambition.  His 
exterior  was  chilling ;  yet  he  took  delight  in  horses  and  the 
chase.  In  conversation  he  was  abrupt,  speaking  little  and 
slowly,  and  with  repulsive  dryness ;  in  the  day  of  battle,  he 
was  all  activity,  and  the  highest  energy,  without  kindling 
his  passions,  animated  his  frame.  His  trust  in  Providence 
was  so  connected  with  faith  in  general  laws  that,  unconscious 
to  himself,  he  had  sympathy  with  the  people,  who  always 
have  faith  in  Providence.  "Do  you  dread  death  in  my 
company  ?  "  he  cried  to  the  anxious  sailors,  when  the  ice  on 
the  coast  of  Holland  had  almost  crushed  the  boat  that  was 
bearing  him  to  the  shore.     Courage  and  pride  pervaded  the 


190  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVIII. 

reserve  of  the  prince,  who,  spurning  an  alliance  with  a 
bastard  daughter  of  Louis  XIV.,  had  made  himself  the 
centre  of  a  gigantic  opposition  to  France.  For  England, 
for  the  English  people,  for  English  liberties,  he  had  no 
affection,  indifferently  employing  the  whigs,  who  found 
their  pride  in  the  revolution,  and  the  tories,  who  had  op- 
posed his  elevation,  and  who  yet  were  the  fittest  instruments 
"to  carry  the  prerogative  high."  One  great  passion  had 
absorbed  his  breast,  the  independence  of  his  native  country. 
The  encroachments  of  Louis  XIV.,  which,  in  1672,  had 
made  him  a  revolutionary  stadholder,  now  assisted  to  con- 
stitute him  a  revolutionary  king,  transforming  the  impassive 
champion  of  Dutch  independence  into  the  defender  of  the 
liberties  of  Europe. 

The  English  statesmen  who  settled  the  principles  of  the 
revolution  took  experience  for  their  guide.  It  is  true  that 
Somers,  the  acknowledged  leader  of  the  whig  party,  of 
plebeian  origin,  and  unsupported  by  inherited  fortune,  was 
ready,  with  the  new  king  from  a  Calvinistic  commonwealth, 
to  admit  some  reform  in  the  maxims  of  government  and  re- 
ligion. Yet,  free  from  fanaticism  even  to  indifference,  by 
nature,  by  his  profession  as  a  lawyer,  and  by  the  tastes 
which  he  had  cultivated,  averse  to  metaphysical  abstrac- 
tions, he  labored  to  make  an  inventory  of  the  privileges  and 
liberties  of  Englishmen  and  imbody  them  in  a  public  law, 
not  to  set  forth  the  rights  of  man.  Freedom  sought  its 
title-deeds  in  experience,  in  customs,  in  records,  charters, 
and  prescription.  The  bill  of  rights  was  designed  to  be  an 
authentic  recapitulation  of  ancient  and  well-established  na- 
tional possessions. 

A  king  had  bj'oken  the  ties  that  bound  England  to  Rome ; 
the  Puritans  made  the  people  of  England  Protestant,  and 
in  the  finally  triumphant  war  of  English  liberty  had  done 
most  efficient  service.  But  the  statute-book  of  the  kingdom, 
alike  when  it  was  Catholic,  and  from  the  days  of  Henry 
VIIL,  knew  no  other  rule  than  the  unity  of  the  church.  It 
was  the  policy  of  Bacon  almost  as  much  as  of  Whitgift.  A 
revolution  made  on  the  principle  of  asserting  established 
rights  and  liber  ies  might  be  willing  to  promote  further  re- 


Chap.  XXVIII.   THE  SOUTH  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.    191 

forms,  but  knew  not  how  to  set  about  thera.  For  Scotland 
there  was  no  such  difficulty ;  there  the  claim  of  right  could, 
on  historical  ground,  recognise  the  abolition  of  Episcopacy. 
In  England,  it  was  taken  for  granted  that  the  Anglican 
church  must  subsist  as  the  national  church,  and  as  a  con- 
sequence the  men  of  the  revolution  desired  to  comprehend 
the  largest  number  of  persons  within  its  pale.  In  the  con- 
vention which  changed  the  dynasty,  there  was  no  party 
strong  enough  to  carry  through  a  vital  change.  The  state 
of  parties  was  reversed ;  Queen  Elizabeth  was  in  earnest,  and 
would  not  be  swayed  by  the  persistent  hostility  of  parliament 
to  all  superstitions  that  lurked  in  the  prayer  book  ;  King 
"William  wished  concessions,  but  his  parliaments  would  not 
support  him,  and  he  was  too  indifferent  to  religion  to  hold 
out.  No  statesman  of  that  day  proposed  to  go  back  to  the 
second  service  book  of  Edward  VI.,  or  to  make  it  possible 
for  a  consistent  Calvinist  like  John  Knox  to  become  a  royal 
chaplain  or  to  be  presented  to  a  benefice.  The  law  of 
Charles  II.,  which  for  the  first  time  required  Episcopal 
ordination  before  presentation  to  a  benefice,  was  not  re- 
pealed. In  the  convocation  of  the  clergy,  the  Puritans  were 
not  represented,  for  the  unrepealed  law  of  Charles  II.  had 
turned  them  all  out  of  the  church.  Nothing  was  therefore 
done  beyond  the  toleration  act  of  the  convention  parliament. 
The  old  laws  enforcing  conformity  were  left  in  force  against 
Catholics ;  Protestants  were  exempted  from  penalties  for 
absenting  themselves  from  church  and  worshipping  in  con- 
venticles, as  the  statute  called  them,  provided  the  religious 
unity  was  so  far  at  least  preserved  that  their  preachers 
would  subscribe  the  doctrinal  articles  of  the  church  of 
England.  But  even  this  narrow  liberty  was  yielded  only 
at  the  price  of  civil  disfranchisement.  The  ministry,  the 
privy  council,  both  houses  of  i:)arliament,  the  bench,  all 
great  employments,  even  places  in  corporations,  were  shut 
against  the  non-conformists,  to  whom  the  English  consti- 
tution, in  a  great  measure,  owed  its  salvation. 

In  Ireland,  persecution  was  double-edged ;  there  was  not 
even  a  toleration  act,  though  two  thirds  of  the  inhabitants 
were  Catholics,  and  of  the  Protestants  one  half  were  non- 


192  COLONIAL   HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVIII. 

conformists.  In  the  next  reign,  the  Anglicans  gained 
fresh  powers  of  harassing  those  who  had  carried  out  most 
thoroughly  the  principles  of  the  Reformation.  To  an  act  of 
terrible  severity  against  the  Catholics,  provisions  were  at- 
tached, to  use  the  words  of  a  British  historian,  that  "if,  on 
the  death  of  a  Protestant  land-owner,  the  Protestant  next  of 
kin,  to  whom  the  estate  would  lapse,  happened  to  be  a 
Presbyterian,  he  was  to  be  passed  over  in  favor  of  a  more 
remote  member  of  the  establishment.  The  English  test  act 
was  introduced  as  a  parenthesis.  The  Presbyterians,  the 
Independents,  the  Huguenot  immigrants,  the  Quakers,  were 
swept  under  the  same  political  disabilities,  and  were  cut  oif 
from  the  army,  the  militia,  the  civil  service,  the  commission 
of  the  peace,  and  from  seats  in  the  municipal  corporations." 

But  the  English  revolution  at  least  accepted  from  the 
Puritans  and  Presbyterians  the  doctrine  of  the  right  of 
resistance  to  tyranny,  the  cherished  principle  of  liberty, 
familiar  in  the  middle  ages  to  the  feudal  nobles  of  every 
monarchy  in  Europe,  and  now  transmitted  as  an  inheritance 
to  the  great  supporters  of  the  Reformation.  The  commons 
of  England,  by  a  vast  majority,  declared  the  executive 
power  to  be  a  conditional  trust ;  and  the  hereditary  assem- 
bly of  patricians,  struggling  in  vain  for  the  acknowledgment 
of  a  right  of  succession  inherent  in  birth,  after  earnest  de- 
bates, submitted  to  confess  an  original  contract  between 
king  and  people.  The  election  of  William  III.  to  be  king 
for  life  was  a  triumph  of  the  perseverance  of  the  more 
popular  party  in  the  commons  over  the  inherited  prejudices 
of  the  high  aristocracy.  In  this  lies  the  democratic  ten- 
dency that  won  to  the  revolution  the  scattered  remnant  of 
"  the  good  old  "  republicans  ;  this  appropriated  to  the  whigs 
the  glory  of  the  change,  in  which  they  took  pride,  and  of 
which  the  tories  regretted  the  necessity.  This  has  com- 
mended to  the  friends  of  freedom  the  epoch  in  which 
the  great  European  world  beheld  a  successful  insurrection  ^ 
against  legitimacy  and  authority  over  mind. 

By  resolving  that  James  II.  had  abdicated,  the  represen- 
tatives  of  the  English  people  assumed  to  sit  in  judgment  on 
its  kings.     By  declaring  the  throne  vacant,  they  annihilated 


CHAP.XXVm.   THE  SOUTH  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.    193 

the  principle  of  legitimacy.  By  disfranchising  a  dynasty 
for  professing  the  Roman  faith,  they  not  only  exerted  the 
power  of  interpreting  the  original  contract,  but  of  intro- 
ducing into  it  new  conditions.  By  electing  a  king,  they 
made  themselves  the  fountain  of  sovereignty.  His  civil  list 
was  settled  by  them  at  his  accession  for  his  life ;  but  all 
other  supplies  were  granted  by  them  annually  and  made 
subject  to  specific  appropriations. 

The  royal  prerogative  of  a  veto  on  the  acts  of  parliament 
soon  fell  into  disuse.  The  dispensing  power  was  expressly 
abrogated,  or  denied.  The  judiciary  was  rendered  inde- 
pendent of  the  crown  ;  so  that  charters  were  safe  against 
executive  interference,  and  state  trials  ceased  to  be  col- 
lisions between  blood-thirsty  hatred  and  despair.  For  Eng- 
land, parliament  was  absolute. 

The  progress  of  civilization  had  gradually  elevated  the 
commercial  classes,  and  given  importance  to  towns.  Among 
those  engaged  in  commerce,  in  which  the  ancient  patricians 
had  no  share,  the  spirit  of  liberty  became  active,  and  was 
quickened  by  the  cupidity  which  sought  new  benefits  for 
trade  through  political  influence.  The  day  for  shouting 
liberty  and  equality  had  not  come ;  the  cry  was  "  Liberty 
and  property."  Wealth  became  a  power  in  the  state ;  and 
when,  at  elections,  the  country  people  were  first  invited  to 
seek  other  representatives  than  the  large  landholders,  it  was 
not  the  leveller  or  the  republican,  but  the  merchant,  or  a 
candidate  in  the  interest  of  the  merchant,  who  taught  the 
timid  electors  their  first  lessons  in  independence. 

Moreover,  as  the  expense  of  wars  soon  exceeded  the  reve- 
nue of  England,  the  government  prepared  to  avail  itself  of 
the  largest  credit.  The  price  of  such  aid  was  political  in- 
fluence. That  the  government  should  protect  commerce 
and  domestic  manufactures,  that  the  classes  benefited  by 
this  policy  should  sustain  the  government  with  all  their 
resources,  was  the  reciprocal  relation  and  compromise,  on 
which  rested  the  fate  of  parties  in  England.  The  accu- 
mulations and  floating  credits  of  commerce  soon  grew 
powerful  enough  to  compete  with  the  landed  interest. 
The  imposing  spectacle  of  the  introduction  of  the  citizens 

VOL.  II.  13 


194  COLONIAL  HISTOKY.  Chap.  XXVIIL 

and  of  commerce  as  the  arbiter  of  alliances,  the  umpire  of 
factions,  the  judge  of  war  and  peace,  roused  the  attention 
of  speculative  men  ;  so  that,  in  a  few  years,  Bolingbroke, 
claiming  to  speak  for  the  landed  aristocracy,  described  his 
opponents  as  the  party  of  the  banks,  the  commercial  cor- 
porations, and,  "in  general,  the  moneyed  interest;"  and 
Addison,  espousing  the  cause  of  the  burgliers,  declared 
nothing  to  be  more  reasonable  than  that  "  those  who  have 
engrossed  the  riches  of  the  nation  should  have  the  manage- 
ment of  its  public  treasure,  and  the  direction  of  its  fleets 
and  armies."  In  a  word,  the  old  English  aristocracy  was 
compelled  to  respect  the  innovating  element  imbodied  in 
the  moneyed  interest. 

Still  more  revolutionary  was  the  political  theory  de- 
veloped by  the  revolution.  Absolute  monarchy  was  denied 
to  be  a  form  of  civil  government.  Nothing,  it  was  held, 
can  bind  freemen  to  obey  any  government  save  their  own 
agreement.  Political  power  is  a  trust ;  and  a  breach  of  the 
trust  dissolves  the  obligation  to  allegiance.  The  supreme 
power  is  the  legislature,  to  whose  guardianship  it  has  been 
sacredly  and  unalterably  delegated.  By  the  fundamental  law 
of  property,  no  taxes  may  be  levied  on  the  people  but  by 
its  own  act  or  that  of  its  authorized  agents. 

The  revolution  is  further  marked  as  a  consequence  of 
public  opinion,  effected  without  bloodshed  in  favor  of  the 
strongest  conviction.  It  refused  to  confirm  itself  by  force, 
and  would  not  tolerate  standing  armies.  It  compelled 
William  III.  to  dismiss  his  Dutch  guards.  A  free  discus- 
sion of  the  national  policy  and  its  agents  was  more  and 
more  demanded  and  permitted.  The  English  government, 
which  used  to  punish  censure  of  its  measures  or  its  minis- 
ters with  merciless  severity,  began  to  lean  on  public  con- 
viction. The  whigs  could  not  consistently  restrain  debate ; 
the  tories,  from  their  interests  as  a  minority,  desired  free- 
dom to  appeal  to  popular  sympathy ;  and  the  adherents  of 
the  fallen  dynasty  loved  to  multiply  complaints  against  im- 
pious usurpation.  All  were  clamorous  for  liberty;  and 
Jacobites  and  patriots  could  frame  a  coalition.  It  was  no 
longer  possible  to  set  limits  to  the  active  spirit  of  inquiry. 


Chap.  XXVIII.   THE  SOUTH  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.    195 

The  philosophy  of  Locke,  cherishing  the  variety  that  is 
always  the  first  fruit  of  analysis  and  free  research,  was  ad- 
mired, even  though  it  seemed  to  endanger  some  dogmas  of 
the  church,  of  which  the  denial  was  still  by  the  statutes  a 
crime.  Men  not  only  dissented  from  the  unity  of  faith, 
but  even  denied  the  reality  of  faith ;  and  philosophy,  pass- 
ing from  the  ideal  world  to  the  actual,  claimed  the  right  of 
observing,  weighing,  measuring,  and  doubting,  at  its  will. 
The  established  censorship  of  the  press,  by  its  own  limita- 
tion, drew  near  its  end,  and,  after  a  short  renewal,  was 
suffered  to  expire,  never  again  to  be  revived.  England 
enjoyed  the  liberty  of  unlicensed  printing.  If  prosecu- 
tions for  libels  still  continued,  the  demand  for  the  freedom 
of  the  press,  was  already  irresistible.  Its  force  was  in- 
creased by  the  unlimited  freedom  of  parliamentary  debate, 
the  freedom  of  elections,  and  the  right  of  petition,  which 
belonged  to  every  Englishman.  "In  the  Revolution  of 
1688,  there  was  certainly  no  appeal  to  the  people."  In 
the  contest  between  the  nation  and  the  throne,  the  aristoc- 
racy constituted  itself  the  mediating  lawgiver,  and  made 
privilege  the  bulwark  of  the  commons  against  despotism. 
The  free  press  carried  political  discussions  everywhere.  By 
slow  degrees,  a  popular  opinion  would  gather  a  conscious- 
ness of  existence.  By  slow  degrees,  the  common  people  v^ 
would  gain  hardihood  enough  to  present  petitions ;  to  come 
together  for  the  consideration  of  public  grievances.  If  the 
aristocracy  refused  to  abdicate  the  control  of  parliament; 
if  Lord  Somers  did  not  propose  a  reform  of  boroughs,  such 
as  the  people  of  that  day  had  not  learned  to  desire,  the 
liberty  of  unlicensed  printing  opened  an  avenue  for  diffus- 
ing political  instruction,  and  was  a  pledge  of  the  ultimate 
concession  of  reform. 

Thus  the  Revolution  of  1688,  though  narrow  in  its  prin- 
ciple, imperfect  in  its  details,  ungrateful  towards  Puritans, 
frightfully  intolerant  towards  Catholics,  forms  an  era  in 
the  history  of  England  and  of  mankind.  Henceforward 
the  title  of  the  king  to  the  crown  was  bound  up  with  the 
title  of  the  aristocracy  to  its  privileges,  of  the  people 
to  its  liberties :   it  sprung  from  the  nation,  and  not  from 


196  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVIIL 

a  power  superior  to  the  nation ;  from  law,  and  not  from 
divine  right;  and  its  responsibility  was  therefore  not  to 
God  alone,  but  to  God  and  the  nation.  The  revolution 
respected  existing  possessions,  yet  made  conquests  for  free- 
dom ;  preserved  the  ascendency  of  the  aristocracy,  yet  in- 
creased the  weight  of  the  middling  class ;  the  securities 
of  personal  liberty,  of  opinion,  and  of  the  press;  and  the 
responsibility  of  the  executive.  England  became  the  star  of 
constitutional  government,  shining  as  a  beacon  on  the  hori- 
zon of  Europe,  and,  in  the  heart  of  despotic  countries, 
compelling  the  eulogies  of  Montesquieu  and  the  homage' 
of  Voltaire.  Never  in  the  history  of  man  had  so  large  a 
state  been  blessed  with  institutions  so  favorable  to  public 
happiness,  to  the  arts  of  peace,  to  the  development  of  its 
natural  resources.  Its  commerce  connected  it  with  every 
quarter  of  the  globe ;  and  its  colonies  were  so  many  pledges 
that  the  whole  race  would  participate  in  the  benefit  of  her 
freedom  and  her  culture. 

When  the  revolution  was  effected,  the  statesmen  of 
England  had  no  plan  for  administering  the  colonies.  The 
new  king  and  his  ministers,  without  knowledge  of  their  con- 
dition or  experience  in  their  affairs,  were  now  swayed  by  the 
principles  of  liberty,  now  eager  to  strengthen  the  preroga- 
tive, and  they  often  followed  the  precedents  and  usages  of 
the  previous  reign. 

To  the  proprietaries  of  Carolina,  the  respect  of  the 
revolution  for  vested  rights  secured  their  possessions. 
In  the  territory  itself,  south  and  west  of  Cape  Fear,  political 
parties  had  already  become  passionate,  if  they  had  not 
acquired  consistency.  Of  "the  pretended  churchmen"  who 
were  among  the  early  emigrants,  some  were  known  as  "  ill 
livers,"  having  the  manners  of  the  time  of  Charles  II.  The 
larger  part  of  the  settlers  were  dissenters,  bringing  with 
them  the  faith  and  the  staid  sobriety  of  the  Calvinists  of 
that  age.  At  first,  "the  ill  livers,"  averse  to  restraint, 
opposed  the  proprietaries,  whose  government  the  grave 
Presbyterians,  as  friends  to  order,  sustained.  When  the 
obstinate  perversity  of  the  proprietaries  drove  the  Presby- 
tei'ians  into  opposition,  those  who  were  styled  "the  nobil- 


1692.  THE   SOUTH  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.  197 

ity,"  together  with  the  high  church  party,  constituted  a 
colonial  oligarchy  against  the  great  mass  of  the  people. 
The  dissenters,  who,  from  respect  to  an  established  govern- 
ment, had  favored  the  proprietaries,  now  joined  even  with 
"  ill  livers  "  in  behalf  of  colonial  rights. 

The  people  had  deposed  Colleton.     His  successor       i690. 
was  Seth  Sothel,  who  to  pretensions  as  a  proprietary 
added  the  choice  of  the  inhabitants     His  administration  is 
the  triumph  of  the  more  popular  party  ;    and  its  enactments 
were  made,  with  silent  disregard  of  the  nobility,  by  the 
exclusive  consent  of  the  commons.     The  "  wise,  moderate, 
and  well-living  "  Thomas  Smith,  who  had  advised  martial 
law,  and  those  who  had  established  it,  were  disfranchised 
for  two  years.      Methods   of  colonial  defence  were 
adopted,  and  were,  in  the  following  years,  improved       i69i. 
by  providing  military  stores,  and  establishing  a  rev- 
enue ;    in   May,  the    Huguenots    were  fully  enfran-    May  i. 
chised,  as  though  they  had  been  free-born  citizens. 
The  statute-book  of  South  Carolina  attests  the  moderation 
and  liberality  of  the  government,  which  derived  its  chief 
sanction  from  the  immigrants. 

But  tranquillity  did  not  return.  As  the  Revolution  of 
1688  respected  the  rights  of  the  proprietaries,  the  insurrec- 
tionary government  soon  came  to  an  end.  Factions  multi- 
plied in  a  colony  which  had  as  yet  gained  no  moral  unity. 
The  legal  sovereigns  would  not  expend  their  private  for- 
tunes in  reducing  their  insurgent  liege-men  ;  the  colonial 
oligarchy,  which  they  favored,  was  too  feeble  a  minority  to 
conduct  the  government ;  and  the  people  were  forbidden  by 
law  to  take  care  of  themselves.  To  this  were  added  the 
evils  of  an  uncertain  boundary  on  the  south,  and  of  disor- 
dered finances. 

All  the  acts  of  the  demofiratio,  legislature  were  i692. 
rejected  by  the  proprietaries  ;  while,  as  a  remedy  for 
anarchy,  Philip  Ludwell,  a  moderate  adherent  of  Berkeley, 
once  collector  of  customs  in  Virginia,  a  man  of  a  candid 
mind,  a  complainant  in  England  against  Effingham,  and 
since  1689  governor  of  North  Carolina,  was  sent  to  establish 
order  and  the  supremacy  of  the  proprietaries.     But  he  had 


198  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVIIL 

power  to  inquire  into  grievances,  not  to  redress  them.  Dis- 
putes respecting  quit-rents  and  the  tenure  of  lands  con- 
tinued ;  and,  after  floating  for  a  year  between  the  wishes  of 
his  employers  and  the  necessities  of  the  colonists,  Ludwell 
gladly  withdrew  into  Virginia. 

A  concession  followed.  In  April,  1693,  the  propri- 
etaries voted  "  that,  as  the  people  have  declared  they 
would  rather  be  governed  by  the  powers  granted  by  the 
charter,  without  regard  to  the  fundamental  constitutions,  it 
will  be  for  their  quiet,  and  for  the  protection  of  the  well- 
disposed,  to  grant  their  request."  So  perished  the  legisla- 
tion of  Shaftesbury  and  Locke.  It  had  been  promulgated 
as  immortal,  and,  having  never  gained  life  in  the  colony, 
was,  within  a  quarter  of  a  century,  abandoned  by  the  pro- 
prietaries themselves.  Palatines,  landgraves,  and  caciques, 
"the  nobility"  of  the  Carolina  statute-book,  were  doomed  to 
pass  away. 

On  the  abrogation  of  the  constitutions,  Thomas  Smith 
was  by  the  proprietaries  appointed  governor.  The  system 
of  biennial  assemblies,  which,  with  slight  changes,  still 
endures,  was  immediately  instituted  by  the  people  ;  but,  as 
the  political  opinions  of  Smith  were  at  variance  with  those 
of  the  majority,  his  personal  virtues  could  not  conciliate  for 
him  confidence.  Despairing  of  success,  he  proposed 
1694.  that  one  of  the  proprietaries  should  visit  Carolina, 
with  ample  powers  alike  of  inquiry  and  of  redress. 
The  advice  pleased ;  and  the  grandson  of  Shaftesbury, 
the  pupil  and  antagonist  of  Locke,  was  elected  dictator. 
On  his  declining,  the  choice  fell  upon  John  Archdale,  an 
honest  member  of  the  society  of  Friends.  He  was  invested 
with  larger  powers  than  any  of  his  predecessors. 

The  disputes  in  South  Carolina  had  grown  out  of  the 
selfishness  of  a  high  church  oligarchy,  sustained  by  the  pro- 
prietaries. Now  the  peaceful  Archdale,  the  mediator  between 
the  factions,  was  himself,  as  a  dissenter,  pledged  to 
Au^^iT.  freedom  of  conscience,  and  his  powers  permitted  him 
to  infuse  candor  into  his  administration,  though  not 
into  the  constitution  of  Carolina.  Conscious  that  "  dissent- 
ers could  kill  wolves  and  bears,  fell  trees,  and  clear  ground, 


1697.  THE  SOUTH  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.  199 

as  well  as  churchmen  ; "  and  acknowledging  that  emigrants 
should  ever  expect  "  an  enlargement  of  their  native  rights 
in  a  wilderness  country,"  —  he  selected  for  the  council  two 
men  of  the  moderate  party  to  one  high  churchman.     This 
balance  of  power  was  in  harmony  with  colonial   opinion. 
By  remitting  quit-rents  for  three  and  for  four  years,  by  reg- 
ulating the  price  of  land  and  the  form  of  conveyances,  by 
giving  the  planter  the  option  of  paying  quit-rents  in  money 
or  in  the  products  of  the  country,  he  quieted  the  jarrings 
between  the  colonists  and  their  feudal  sovereigns.     To  culti- 
vate friendship  with  the  Indians,  he  established  a  board  to 
decide  all  contests  between  them  and  the  white  men.     The 
natives  round  Cape  Fear  obtained  protection  against  kid- 
nappers, and   requited  this    security  by   kindness  towards 
mariners  shipwrecked  on  their  coast.     The  government  was 
organized   as  it  had   been  in   Maryland,   the   proprietaries 
appointing  the  council,  the  people   electing  the   house  of 
assembly.     The  defence  of  the  colony  rested  on  the  militia. 
With   the    Spaniards    at    St.  Augustine  friendly  relations 
sprung  up :  a  Quaker  could  respect  the  faith  of  a  papist. 
Four  Indians,  converts  of  the  Spanish  priests,  captives  to 
the  Yamassees,    and  exposed   to  sale   as  slaves,  were  ran- 
somed by  Archdale,  and  sent  to  the  governor  of  St.  Augus- 
tine.     "  I    shall    manifest    reciprocal    kindness,"   was    his 
reply,  "  and  shall  always  observe   a  good  correspondence 
with  you;"  and,  when  an  English  vessel  was  wa-ecked  on 
Florida,  the  Spaniards  retaliated  the  benevolence  of  Arch- 
dale. 

The  fame  of  Carolina  began  to  increase  now  that  jg^g 
it "  stood  circumstanced  with  the  honor  of  a  true  Eng-  J^^"®  26. 
lish  government,  zealous  for  the  increase  of  virtue  as  well 
as  outward  trade  and  business ; "  and  the  representatives  of 
its  freemen  declared  that  Archdale,  "by  his  wisdom,  pa- 
tience, and  labor,  had  laid  a  firm  foundation  for  a  most 
glorious  superstructure." 

Immediately  after  the  return  of  the  Quaker  legislator,  the 
Huguenots  were  once  more  and  successfully  endowed 
with  the  rights  of  citizens  by  the  colonial  legislature.  ]v/a?ia 
Liberty  of  conscience  was  conferred  on    all    Chris- 


200  COLONIAL  HISTOKY.  Chap.  XXVIH. 

tians,  unhappily  with  the  exception  of  papists.     This  was 
the  first  act  in  CaroKna  disfranchising  religious  opinion. 
Soon  after  Archdale  reached  England,  the  work  of 

proprietary  legislation  was  renewed.  The  new  code 
asserted  the  favorite  maxim  of  the  reformers  of  that  day, 
that  "  all  power  and  dominion  are  most  naturally  founded 
in  property."  But  this  maxim,  which  in  England  was,  in 
the  progress  of  freedom,  a  conquest  of  commercial  industry 
over  the  pride  of   birth,  was,  with  the  laws  resting  on  it, 

rejected  in  Carolina.  The  journals  of  the  provincial 
Septal    assembly  show  that,  after  they  had  been  read  and 

debated,  paragraph  by  paragraph,  the  question  of 
ordering  them  to  a  second  reading  was  carried  in  the  nega- 
tive. Carolina  refused  alike  a  hereditary  nobility  and  the 
dominion  of  wealth. 

The  colonial  oligarchy  looked  for  favor  to  an  exclusive 
religion   of   state.     Even   the    consent   of    non-conformists 

had  been  given  to  the  public  maintenance  of  one  min- 
^^y^g     ister  of  the  church  of  England  ;  and  orthodoxy  had, 

as  in  nearly  every  colony,  been  protected  by  the 
1704.       menace  of  disfranchisement   and  prisons.     In    1704, 

"the  high  pretended  churchmen,"  having,  by  the 
arts  of  Nathaniel  Johnson,  gained  a  majority  of  one  in  an 
assembly  representing  a  colony  of  which  two  thirds  were 
dissenters,  abruptly  disfranchised  them  all,  and,  after  the 
English  precedent,  gave  to  the  church  of  England  a  monop- 
oly of  political  power.  The  council,  no  longer  composed  on 
the  princijiles  of  Archdale,  joined  in  the  eager  assent  of  |the 
governor.  In  the  court  of  the  proprietaries,  Archdale  op- 
posed the  bill ;  but  Lord  Granville,  the  palatine,  an  oppo- 
nent to  occasional  conformity,  scorned  the  remonstrances  of 
the  Quaker.  "You,"  said  he,  "are  of  one  opinion,  I  of 
another ;  and  our  lives  may  not  be  long  enough  to  end  the 
controversy.      I  am  for  this  bill,  and  this  is  the  party  that 

I  will  head  and  countenance."  Dissenters  having 
Nov.       thus  been  excluded  from  the  house  of  commons,  the 

church  of  England  was  easily  established  by  law. 
At  the  same  time,  a  body  of  lay  commissioners  was  nomi- 
nated  by  the  oligarchy  from  its  own  number,  to  supersede 


1706.  THE   SOUTH  AFTER  THE   REVOLUTION.  201 

the  authority  of  the  bishop.  The  intolerant  spirit  which 
persecuted  dissenters  assumed  "  a  haughty  dominion  over 
the  clergy  itself." 

The  dissenters,  excluded   from   the   colonial   legislature, 
rejected  with  contumely  by  the  proprietaries,  appealed  to 
the  house    of  lords,  where  the  spirit  of  Somers  prevailed. 
An  address  to  Queen  Anne,  in  behalf  of  them,  was 
adopted ;  the  lords  of  trade  and  plantations  reported  M^ar.^i2. 
that  the  proprietaries  had  forfeited  their  charter,  and  May  24. 
advised  its  recall   by  a  judicial   process;   the   intol- 
erant   acts  were,  by  royal   authority,  declared   null  June  lo. 
and  void.     In  November  of  the  same  year  they  were 
repealed   by  the    colonial   assembly;   but,  while  dissenters 
were  tolerated  and  could  share  political  power,  the  church 
of   England  was  immediately  established  as  the  religion  of 
the  province. 

This  compromise  continued  till  the  revolution.  Mean- 
time, the  authority  of  the  proprietaries  was  tainted  by  the 
declaration  of  the  queen  and  the  opinion  of  English  law- 
yers. Strifes  ensued  perpetually  respecting  quit-rents  and 
finances ;  and,  as  the  proprietaries  provided  no  sufficient 
defence  for  the  colony,  their  power,  which  had  no  guaran- 
tee even  in  their  own  interests,  and  still  less  in  the  policy 
of  the  English  government  or  the  good-will  of  the  colonists, 
awaited  only  an  opportunity  to  expire. 

This  period  of  turbulence  and  insurrection,  of  angry  fac- 
tions and  popular  excitements,  was  nevertheless  a  period  of 
prosperity.  The  country  rapidly  increased  in  population 
and  the  value  of  its  exports.  The  prolific  rice-plant  had,  at 
a  very  early  period,  been  introduced  from  Madagascar ;  in 
1691,  the  legislature  rewarded  the  invention  of  new  meth- 
ods for  cleansing  it ;  its  culture  steadily  increased ;  and 
the  rice  of  Carolina  was  esteemed  the  best  in  the  world. 
Hence  the  opulence  of  the  colony ;  hence,  also,  its  swarms 
of  negro  slaves.  The  profits  of  the  rice-fields  tempted  the 
planter  to  enlarge  his  domains,  and  Africa  furnished  la- 
borers. 

The  cereal  grasses  were  ill  adapted  to  the  sands  near  the 
sea,  or  the  alluvial  swamps.     The  woods  were  more  inviting. 


202  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVIIL 

Early  in  the  eighteenth  century,  the  Carolina  Indian  trader 
had  penetrated  a  thousand  miles  into  the  interior.  The 
skins  of  bears,  beavers,  wildcats,  deer,  foxes,  and  raccoons, 
invited  commerce.  The  oak  was  cleft  into  staves  for  the 
West  Indies  :  the  trunk  of  the  pine  was  valued  for  masts, 
boards,  and  joists ;  its  juices  yielded  turpentine ;  from  the 
same  tree,  when  dry,  fire  extracted  tar. 

But  naval  stores  were  still  more  the  produce  of  North 
Carolina,  where,  as  yet,  slaves  were  very  few,  and  the 
planters  mingled  a  leisurely  industry  with  the  use  of  the 
fowling-piece.  While  the  Avorld  was  set  on  fire  by  wars  of 
unparalleled  extent,  the  unpolished  inhabitants  of  North  Car- 
olina multiplied  and  spread  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  highest 
personal  liberty.  Five  miles  below  Edenton,  just  a  hun- 
dred yards  from  the  sound,  beneath  the  shade  of  a  large 
cedar,  the  stone  that  marks  the  grave  of  Henderson  Walker 
keeps  the  record  that  "  North  Carolina,  during  his  adminis- 
tration, enjoyed  tranquillity."  This  is  the  history  of  four 
years  in  which  the  people,  without  molestation,  enjoyed 
their  wild  independence.  It  was  the  liberty  of  freemen 
in  the  woods.  "  North  Carolina,"  like  ancient  Rome,  was 
famed  "  as  the  sanctuary  of  runaways ;  "  seventy  years  after 
its  origin,  Spotswood  describes  it  as  "a  country  where 
there's  scarce  any  form  of  government ; "  and  it  long  con- 
tinued to  be  said,  with  but  slight  exaggeration,  that  "in 
Carolina  every  one  did  what  was  right  in  his  own  eyes> 
paying  tribute  neither  to  God  nor  to  Caesar." 

In  such  a  country,  which  was  almost  an  utter  stranger  to 
any  public  worship,  among  a  people  made  up  of  Presby- 
terians and  Independents,  of  Lutherans  and  Quakers,  of 
men  who  drew  their  politics,  their  faith,  and  their  law  from 
the  light  of  nature,  —  where,  according  to  the  royalists,  the 
majority  "  were  Quakers,  atheists,  deists,  and  other  evil-dis- 
posed persons,"  —  the  pious  zeal  or  the  bigotry  of  the 
1704.  proprietaries,  selecting  Robert  Daniel,  the  deputy 
governor,  as  the  fit  instrument,  resolved  on  estab- 
lishing the  church  of  England.  The  legislature,  chosen 
without  reference  to  Jthis  end,  after  much  opposition,  ac- 
ceded to  the  design  ;  and  further  enacted  that  no  one,  who 


1711.  THE   SOUTH  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.  203 

would  not  take  the  oath  prescribed  by  law,  should  hold  a 
place  of  trust  in  the  colony.  Then  did  North  Carolina  first 
gain  experience  of  disfranchisements  for  opinions ;  then  did 
it  first  hear  of  glebes  and  a  clergy;  then  were  churches  first 
ordered  to  be  erected  at  the  public  cost.  But  a  people  does 
not  bend  in  a  generation  :  the  laws  could  not  be  enforced  ; 
and,  six  years  afterwards,  "there  was  but  one  clergyman 
in  the  whole  country."  The  Quakers,  led  by  their  faith, 
were  foremost  in  opposition.  They  were  "not  only  the 
principal  fomenters  of  the  distractions  in  Carolina,"  but 
the  governor  of  the  Old  Dominion  complained  that  they 
"made  it  their  business  to  instil  the  like  pernicious  notions 
into  the  minds  of  his  majesty's  subjects  in  Virginia,  and  to 
justify  the  mad  actions  of  the  rabble  by  arguments  destruc- 
tive to  all  government." 

On  a  vacancy  in  the  office  of  governor,  anarchy  1705. 
prevailed.  "  The  North  had  been  usually  governed 
by  a  deputy,  appointed  by  the  governor  of  South  Carolina;'* 
and  Thomas  Cary  obtained  a  commission  in  the  wonted 
form.  The  proprietaries  disapproved  the  appointment,  and 
gave  leave  to  the  little  oligarchy  of  their  own  deputies  to 
elect  the  chief  magistrate.  Their  choice  fell  on  William 
Glover ;  and  the  colony  was  forthwith  rent  with  divisions. 
On  the  one  side  were  churchmen  and  royalists,  the  im- 
mediate friends  of  the  proprietaries ;  on  the  other,  "  a  rabble 
of  profligate  persons,"  that  is,  the  Quakers  and  other  dis- 
senters, and  that  majority  of  the  people  which  was  uncon- 
sciously swayed  by  democratic  instincts.  Each  party 
had  its  governor;  each  elected  its  house  of  repre-  ■^{Jio*^ 
sentatives.  Neither  could  entirely  prevail.  The  one 
wanted  a  legal  sanction,  the  other  popular  favor ;  and,  as 
"  it  had  been  the  common  practice  for  them  in  North  Car- 
olina to  resist  and  imprison  their  governors,"  till  they  came 
"  to  look  upon  that  as  lawful  which  had  been  so  long  tol- 
erated, the  party  of  the  proprietaries  was  easily  "  trodden 
under  foot."  "  The  Quakers  were  a  numerous  people  there, 
and,  having  been  fatally  trusted  with  a  large  share  in  the 
administration  of  that  government,"  were  resolved  nio., 
"  to  maintain  themselves  therein."     To  restore  order,       ^^^^* 


204  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVIH. 

Edward  Hyde  was  despatched  to  govern  the  province ;  but 
he  was  to  receive  his  commission  as  deputy  from  Tynte, 
the  governor  of  the  southern  division ;  and,  as  Tynte  had 
ah-eady  fallen  a  victim  to  the  climate,  Hyde  could  show  no 
evidence  of  his  right,  except  private  letters  from  the  pro- 
prietaries ;  and  "  the  respect  due  to  his  birth  could  avail 
nothing  on  that  mutinous  people."  The  legislature  which  he 
convened,  having  been  elected  under  forms  which,  in  the 
eyes  of  his  opponents,  tainted  the  action  with  illegality, 
showed  no  desire  to  heal  by  prudence  the  distractions  of 
the  country,  but,  blinded  by  zeal  for  revenge,  made  pas- 
sionate enactments,  "  of  which  they  themselves  had  not 
power  to  enforce  the  execution,"  and  which,  in  Virginia, 
even  royalists  condemned  as  unjustifiably  severe.  At  once 
"the  true  spirit  of  Quakerism  appeared"  in  an  open  dis- 
obedience to  unjust  laws :  Gary  and  some  of  his  friends 
took  up  arms ;  it  was  rumored  that  they  were  ready  for  an 
alliance  with  the  Indians ;  and  Spotswood,  an  experienced 
soldier,  now  governor  of  Virginia,  was  summoned  by  Hyde 
as  an  ally.  The  loyalty  of  the  veteran  was  embarrassed. 
He  could  not  esteem  "  a  country  safe  which  had  in  it  such 
dangerous  incendiaries."  He  believed  that,  unless  "  meas- 
ures were  taken  to  discourage  the  mutinous  spirits,  who 
had  become  so  audacious  as  to  take  up  arms,  it  would  prove 
a  dangerous  example  to  the  rest  of  her  majesty's  planta- 
tions." But  "the  difficulties  of  marching  forces  into  a 
country  so  cut  with  rivers  were  almost  insuperable ;  '•'  there 
were  no  troops  but  the  militia ;  the  counties  bordering  on 
Carolina  were  "  stocked  with  Quakers,"  or,  at  least,  with 
"  the  articles  of  those  people ; "  and  the  governor  of  Vir- 
ginia might  almost  as  well  have  undertaken  a  military 
expedition  against  foxes  and  raccoons,  or  have  attempted 
to  enforce  religious  uniformity  among  the  conies,  as  employ 
methods  of  invasion  against  men  whose  dwellings  were 
so  sheltered  by  creeks,  so  hidden  by  forests,  so  protected 
by  solitudes.  The  insurgents  "obstructed  the  course  of 
justice,  demanding  the  dissolution  of  the  assembly,  and  the 
repeal  of  all  laws  they  disliked."  Spotswood  could  only 
send  a  party  of  marines  from  the  guard-ships,  as  evidence 


1710.  THE   SOUTH  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.  205 

of  his  disposition.    No  effusion  of  blood  followed.     Gary, 
and  the  leaders  of  his  party,  on  the  contrary,  boldly  ap- 
peared   in   Virginia,   for    the    purpose,    as    they   said,    of 
appealing   to   England   in    defence   of   their   actions ;    and 
Spotswood  compelled  them  to  take  their  passage  in  the 
men-of-war  that  were  just  returning.     But  North  Carolina 
remained    as    before;    its    burgesses,   obeying    the 
popular  judgment,  "refused  to  make  provision  for    ^l^l^!^ 
defending  any  part  of  their  country,"  unless  "they 
could   introduce   into   the   government   the    persons   most 
obnoxious  for  the  late  rebellion  ; "  and  therefore  the 
assembly  was  promptly  dissolved.     There  was  little       p^^! 
hope  of  harmony  between  the  proprietaries  and  the 
inhabitants  of  North  Carolina. 

But  here,  as  elsewhere  in  America,  this  turbulence  of 
freedom  did  not  check  the  increase  of  population.  Not- 
withstanding the  contradictory  accounts,  the  province,  from 
its  first  permanent  settlement  by  white  men,  has  constantly 
been  advancing,  and  has,  I  think,  always  exceeded  South 
Carolina  in  numbers.  The  country  ^between  the 
Trent  and  the  Neuse  was  occupied ;  and  at  the  con-  nio. 
fluence  of  those  rivers,  in  a  wide  sandy  champaign, 
emigrants  from  Switzerland  began  the  settlement  of  New 
Berne.  Germans,  fugitives  from  the  devastated  Palatinate, 
found  a  home  in  the  same  vicinity.  In  these  early  days, 
few  negroes  were  introduced  into  the  colony.  Its  trade 
was  chiefly  engrossed  by  New  England.  The  increasing 
expenses  of  the  government  amounted,  in  1714,  to  nine 
hundred  pounds.  While  the  people  were  establishing  a 
commonwealth,  the  surplus  revenue  to  the  proprietaries, 
by  sales  of  land  and  the  quit-rents  from  their  boundless 
domains,  was  but  one  hundred  and  sixty-nine  pounds,  or 
twenty  guineas  to  each  proprietary. 

For  Virginia,  the  revolution  gave  to  her  liberties  the 
regularity  of  law ;  in  other  respects,  the  character  of  her 
people  and  the  forms  of  her  government  were  not  changed. 
The  first  person  who,  in  the  reign  of  King  William,  entered 
the  Ancient  Dominion  as  lieutenant-governor,  was  the  same 
Francis  Nicholson  who,  in  the  days  of  King  James,  had 


206  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVIIL 

been  the  deputy  of  Andros  for  the  consolidated  provinces 
of  the  north,  and  had  been  expelled  from  New  York 
1692.  by  the  insurgent  people ;  his  successor  was  Andros 
himself,  fresh  from  imprisonment  in  Massachusetts. 
The  earlier  administration  of  the  ardent  but  narrow-minded 
Nicholson  was  signalized  by  the  establishment  of  the  College 
of  William  and  Mary,  the  first-fruits  of  the  revolution,  in 
age  second  only  to  Harvard ;  at  the  instance  of  the  learned 
and  persevering  commissary  Blair,  whose  zeal  for  future 
generations  was  aided  by  subscriptions,  by  a  gift  of  quit- 
rents  from  the  king,  by  an  endowment  from  the  royal 
domain,  and  by  a  tax  of  a  penny  a  pound  on  tobacco  ex- 
ported to  other  plantations.  To  the  care  of  Andros  the 
historical  inquirer  owes  the  preservation  of  those  few  early 
papers  of  Virginia  which  have  escaped  ofiicial  neglect,  fires, 
time,  and  civil  wars ;  but  neither  from  the  royalist  gover- 
nors of  that  day,  nor  from  their  successors,  was  there  hope 
of  an  enlargement  of  civil  freedom. 

The  powers  of  the  governor  were  exorbitant ;  he  was  at 
once  lieutenant-general  and  admiral,  lord  treasurer  and 
chancellor,  the  chiei  judge  in  all  courts,  president  of  the 
council,  and  bishop,  or  ordinary ;  so  that  the  armed  force, 
the  revenue,  the  interpretation  of  law,  the  administration  of 
justice,  the  church,  —  all  were  under  his  control. 

The  checks  on  his  power  existed  in  his  instructions,  in 
the  council,  and  in  the  general  assembly.  But  the  instruc- 
tions were  kept  secret ;  and,  besides,  they  rather  confirmed 
his  prerogatives.  The  members  of  the  council  owed  their 
appointment  to  his  recommendation,  their  continuance  to 
his  pleasure,  and,  moreover,  looked  to  him  for  advancement 
to  places  of  profit.  The  assembly  was  restrained  by  the 
prospect  of  a  negative  from  the  governor  and  from  the 
crown,  was  compelled  to  solicit  the  concurrence  of  the  coun- 
cil, was  exposed  to  influence  from  royal  patronage,  was 
watched  in  its  actions  by  a  clerk  whom  the  governor  ap- 
pointed, and  was  always  sure  of  being  dissolved  if  com- 
plaints grew  loud  or  opposition  ardent.  It  had,  moreover, 
lost  the  method  of  resistance  best  suited  to  the  times,  since, 
in  addition  to  quit-rents,  a  fonner  legislature  had  established 
a  perpetual  revenue. 


A     '^     OF   THE  \ 

f  UNIVERSITY   I 

1703.       X^JftftW©*^'^^^   ^^^  REVOLUTION.  207 

Yet  the  people  of  Virginia  found  methods  of  nourishing 
the  spirit  of  independence.  The  permanent  revenue  was 
sure  to  be  exhausted  on  the  governor  and  his  favorites  ; 
when  additional  supplies  became  necessary,  the  burgesses, 
as  in  Jamaica  and  in  other  colonies,  claimed  the  right  of 
nominating  a  treasurer  of  their  own,  subject  to  their  orders, 
without  further  warrant  from  the  governor.  The  statutes 
of  Virginia  show  that  the  first  assembly  after  the  . 
revolution  set  this  example,  which  was  often  imitated.  i69i. 
The  denial  of  this  system  by  the  crown  increased  the 
aversion  to  raising  money ;  so  that  Virginia  refused  to  con- 
tribute its  quota  to  the  defence  of  the  colonies  against 
France,  and  not  only  disregarded  the  special  orders  for 
assisting  Albany,  but  with  unanimity,  and  even  with  the 
assent  of  the  council,  justified  its  disobedience.  While 
other  provinces  were  exhausted  by  taxation,  in  eleven  years 
eighty-three  pounds  of  tobacco  for  each  poll  was  the 
total  sum  levied  by  all  the  special  acts  of  the  assembly  ^\jl^^ 
of  Virginia. 

The  very  existence  of  the  forms  of  representation  led  to 
comparison.  Virginia  was  conscious  of  its  importance  to 
the  mother  country;  and  its  inhabitants,  long  aware  that 
their  liberties  were  less  than  those  of  New  England,  were 
put  "upon  a  nice  inquiry  into  the  circumstances  of  the 
government."  England  also  provoked  a  generous  rivalry. 
"The  assembly  concluded  itself  entitled  to  all  the  rights 
and  privileges  of  an  English  parliament ; "  and  the  records 
of  the  house  of  commons  were  examined  in  search  of  pre- 
cedents favorable  to  legislative  freedom. 

The  constitution  of  the  church  in  Virginia  cherished 
colonial  freedom  ;  for  the  act  of  1642,  which  established  it, 
reserved  the  right  of  presentation  to  the  parish.  The  license 
of  the  bishop  of  London  and  the  recommendation  of  the 
governor  availed,  therefore,  but  little.  Sometimes  the  par- 
ish rendered  the  establishment  nugatory  by  its  indolence 
of  action ;  sometimes  the  minister,  if  acceptable  to  the  con- 
gregation, was  received,  but  not  presented.  It  was 
the  general  custom  to  hire  the  minister  from  year  to  1703. 
year.     A  legal  opinion  was  obtained  from  England, 


208  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVni. 

that  the  minister  is  an  incumbent  for  life,  and  cannot  be 
displaced  by  his  parishioners ;  but  the  vestry  kept  themselves 
the  parson's  master  by  preventing  his  induction,  so  that  he 
acquired  no  freehold  in  his  living,  and  might  be  removed  at 
pleasure.  Nor  was  the  character  of  the  clergy  who  came 
over  always  suited  to  win  affection  or  respect.  The  par- 
ishes, moreover,  were  of  such  length  that  some  of  the  people 
lived  fifty  miles  from  the  parish  church ;  and  the  assembly 
would  not  increase  the  taxes  by  changing  the  bounds,  even 
from  fear  of  impending  "  paganism,  atheism,  or  sectaries." 
"Schism"  threatened  "to  creep  into  the  church,"  and  to 
generate  "  faction  in  the  civil  government ; "  and,  when 
Virginia  and  the  crown  came  to  a  first  violent  collision,  the 
strife  related  to  the  rights  of  "  the  parsons." 

But  the  greatest  safeguard  of  liberty  in  Virginia  was  the 
individual  freedom  of  mind,  which  formed,  of  necessity,  the 
characteristic  of  independent  landholders  living  apart  on 
their  plantations.  In  the  age  of  commercial  monopoly, 
Virginia  had  not  one  market  town,  not  one  place  of  trade. 
"  As  to  outward  appearance,  it  looked  all  like  a  wild 
desert ; "  and  the  mercantile  world,  founding  its  judgment 
on  the  absence  of  cities,  regarded  it  as  "  one  of  the  poorest, 
miserablest,  and  worst  countries  in  all  America."  It  did 
not  seek  to  share  actively  in  the  profits  of  commerce;  it  had 
little  of  the  precious  metals,  and  still  less  of  credit ;  it  was 
satisfied  with  agriculture.  Taxes  were  paid  in  tobacco ; 
remittances  to  Europe  were  made  in  tobacco ;  the  revenue 
of  the  clergy,  and  the  magistrates,  and  the  colony,  was  col- 
lected in  the  same  currency ;  the  colonial  tradesman  received 
his  pay  in  straggling  parcels  of  it ;  and  ships  from  abroad 
were  obliged  to  lie  whole  months  in  the  rivers,  before  boats, 
visiting  the  several  plantations  on  their  banks,  could  pick  up 
a  cargo.  In  the  season  of  a  commercial  revolution,  the 
commercial  element  did  not  enter  into  the  character  of  the 
colony.  Its  inhabitants  "  daily  grew  more  and  more  averse 
to  cohabitation."  All  royalists  and  churchmen  as  they  were 
by  ancestry,  habit,  and  established  law,  they  reasoned  boldly 
in  their  seclusion,  making  their  own  good  pleasure 
1703.       their  rule  of  conduct.     "  Pernicious  notions,  fatal  to 


1709. 
1710. 


1710.  THE   SOUTH  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.  209 

the  royal  prerogative,  were  impfovmg  daily ;  "  and,  though 
Virginia  protested  against  the  charge  of  "  republicanism," 
as  an  unfounded  reproach,  yet  colonial  opinion,  the  off- 
spring of  free  inquiry  which  seclusion  awakened,  the  woods 
sheltered,  and  the  self-will  of  slaveholders  fortified,  was 
more  than  a  counterpoise  to  the  prerogative  of  tlie  Brit- 
ish crown.  In  former  ages,  no  colony  had  ever  enjoyed  a 
happier  freedom.  From  the  days  of  the  insurrection  of 
Bacon,  for  a  period  of  three  quarters  of  a  century,  Virginia 
possessed  uninterrupted  peace.  On  its  own  soil,  the  strife 
with  the  Indians  was  ended ;  the  French  hesitated  to  invade 
the  western  frontier,  on  which  they  lowered  :  if  some- 
times alarm  was  spread  by  privateers  upon  the  coast, 
a  naval  foe  was  not  attracted  to  a  region  which  had 
neither  town  nor  magazines,  wherc-jthere  was  nothing  to 
destroy  but  a  field  of  tobacco,  nothing  to  plunder  but  the 
frugal  stores  of  scattered  plantations.  The  soil  was  stained 
by  nothing  but  the  sweat  of  the  laborer.  In  such  scenes  of 
tranquil  happiness,  the  political  strifes  were  but  the  fitful 
ebullitions  of  a  high  spirit,  which,  in  the  wantonness  of  in- 
dependence, loved  to  tease  the  governor;  and,  again,  if  the 
burgesses  expressed  loyalty,  they  were  loyal  only  because 
loyalty  was  their  humor.  Hence  the  reports  forwarded  to 
England  were  often  contradictory.  "  The  inclinations  of 
the  country,"  wrote  Spotswood  in  1710,  "  are  rendered 
mysterious  by  a  new  and  unaccountable  humor,  which  hath 
obtained  in  several  counties,  of  excluding  the  gentlemen 
from  being  burgesses,  and  choosing  only  persons  of  mean 
figure  and  character."  "  This  government,"  so  he  reported 
in  the  nejct  year,  "  is  in  perfect  peace  and  tranquillity,  under 
a  due  obedience  to  the  royal  authority,  and  a  gentlemanly 
conformity  to  the  church  of  ^England;"  and  the  letter  had 
hardly  left  the  Chesapeake  before  he  found  himself  thwarted 
by  the  impracticable  burgesses ;  and,  dissolving  the  assembly, 
feared  to  convene  another  till  opinion  should  change.  But 
Spotswood,  the  best  in  the  line  of  Virginia  governors,  a 
royalist,  a  high  churchman,  a  traveller,  bore  testimony  to 
the  virtues  of  the  people.  "  I  will  do  justice  to  this  coun- 
try," he  writes  to  the  bishop  of  London,  and  his  evidence 

VOL.  II.  14 


210 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVIII. 


is  without  suspicion  of  bi-as ;  "  I  have  observed  here  less 
swearing  and  prophaneness,  less  drunkenness  and  debauch- 
ery, less  uncharitable  feuds  and  animosities,  and  less  knav- 
erys  and  villanys,  than  in  any  part  of  the  world,  where  my 
lot  has  been."  The  estimate  of  fifty  thousand  as  the  popula- 
tion of  the  colony  on  the  accession  of  Queen  Anne  is  far 
too  low. 

The  English  revolution  was  a  "  Protestant "  revolution  : 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  proprietary  of  Maryland  it  seques- 
tered the  authority,  while  it  protected  the  fortunes.  Dur- 
ing the  absence  of  Lord  Baltimore  from  his  province,  his 
powers  had  been  delegated  to  nine  deputies,  over  whom 
William  Joseph  presided.  The  spirit  that  swayed  their 
counsels  sprung  from  the  doctrine  of  legitimacy  which  the 
revolution  had  prostr^^ed ;  and  they  fell  with  it.  Distrust- 
ing the  people,  they  provoked  opposition  by  demanding  of 
the  assembly,  as  a  qualification  of  its  members,  an  oath  of 
fidelity  to  the  proprietary.  On  resistance  to  the  illegal  de- 
mand, the  house  was  prorogued ;  and,  even  after  the  suc- 
cessful invasion  of  England  became  known,  the  deputies  of 
Lord  Baltimore  hesitated  to  proclaim  the  new  sovereigns. 
1689.  The  delay  gave  birth  to  an  armed  association  for 

"^P"^'  asserting  the  right  of  King  William  ;  and  the  depu- 
ties were  easily  driven  to  a  garrison  on  the  south  side  of 
Patuxent  River,  about  two  miles  above  its  mouth. 
Aug.  1.  There  they  capitulated,  obtaining  security  for  them- 
selves, and  yielding  their  assent  to  the  exclusion  of 
papists  from  all  provincial  ofiices.  A  convention  of  the 
associates,  "  for  the  defence  of  the  Protestant  religion,"  as- 
sumed the  government  in  the  names  of  William  and  Mary, 
and  in  a  congratulatory  address  denounced  the  influence  of 
Jesuits,  the  prevalence  of  popish  idolatry,  the  connivance 
by  the  government  at  murders  of  Protestants,  and  the 
danger  from  plots  with  the  French  and  Indians. 

The  privy  council,  after  a  debate  on  the  address,  advised 

the  forfeiture  of  the  charter  by  a  process  of  law ;  but  King 

William,  heedless  of  the  remonstrances  of  the  proprietary 

1691.     who  could  be  convicted  of  no  crime  but  his  creed, 

junei.    ^jj^  impatient  of  judicial  forms,  by  his  own  power 


1702.  THE  SOUTH  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.  211 

constituted  Maryland  a  royal  government.      The  arbitrary 
decree  was  sanctioned  by  a  legal  opinion  from  Lord  Holt ; 
and   the   barons  of   Baltimore  were  superseded   for 
a  generation.     In   1692,  Sir   Lionel  Copley  arrived       i692. 
with  a  royal  commission,  dissolved  the  convention, 
assumed  the  government,  and  convened  an  assembly.     Its 
first   act   recognised  William  and   Mary;   but,  as   it   con- 
tained a  clause  giving  validity  in  the  colony  to  the  Great 
Charter  of  England,  it  was   not   accepted   by  the   crown. 
The   second    established  the   church   of    England    as    the 
religion   of  the   state,  to   be   supported  by  general   taxa- 
tion.     The  ancient  capital,  inconvenient  in  its   site,  was, 
moreover,  tenanted  chiefly  by  Catholics  and  surrounded  by 
proprietary  recollections :  under  Protestant  auspices, 
the  city  sacred  to  the  Virgin  Mary  was  abandoned,       i694. 
and  Annapolis  became  the  seat  of  government.     The 
establishment  of  a  religion  of  state,  earnestly  advanced  by 
the  boastful  eagerness  of  Francis  Nicholson,  who  for 
four  years  was  governor  of  Maryland,  and  by  the    ^Hg^^ 
patient,  the  disinterested,  but  unhappily  too  exclu- 
sive earnestness  of  the  commissary,  Thomas  Bray,  became 
the  settled  policy  of  the  government.     In  1696,  the  inviola- 
ble claim  of  the  colony  to  English  rights  and  liberties  was 
engrafted  by  the  assembly  on  the  act  of  establishment ;  and 
this  also  was  disallowed;   for  the  solicitor-general  Trevor 
"  knew  not  how  far  the  enacting  that  the  great  charter  of 
England  should  be  observed  in  all  points  would  be  agreea- 
ble to  the  constitution  of  the  colony  or  consistent  with 
the  royal  prerogative."     In  1700,  the  presence  and       noo. 
personal  virtues  of  Bray,  who  saw  Christianity  only  in 
the  English  church,  obtained  by  unanimity  a  law  command- 
ing conformity  in  every  "  place  of  public  worship."     Once 
more  the  act  was  rejected  in  England  from  regard  to  the 
rights  of  Protestant  dissenters  ;  and  when,  at  last,  the 
Anglican  ritual  was  established  by  the  colonial  legisla-       1702. 
ture,  and  the  right  of  appointment  and  induction  to 
every  parish  was  secured  to  the  governor,  the  English  acts 
of  toleration  were  at  the  same  time  put  in  force.      Prot- 
estant  dissent   was   safe ;    for   the   difficulty  of   obtaining 


212  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXVni. 

English  missionaries,  the  remoteness  of  the  ecclesiastical 
tribunals,  the  scandal  arising  from  the  profligate  lives  and 
impunity  in  crime  of  many  clergymen,  the  zeal  of  the  nu- 
merous Quakers  for  intellectual  freedom,  and  the  activity 
of  a  sort  of  "  wandering  pretenders  from  New  England," 
deluding  even  "  churchmen  by  their  extemporary  prayers 
and  preachments,"  —  all  united  as  a  barrier  against  persecu- 
tion. The  Roman  Catholics  alone  were  left  without  an 
ally,  exposed  to  English  bigotry  and  colonial  injustice. 
On  the  soil  which,  long  before  Locke  pleaded  for  toleration 

or  Penn  for  religious  freedom,  a  Catholic  proprietary 
1704.       had  opened  to  Protestants,  the  Catholic  inhabitant 

became  the  victim  of  Anglican  intolerance.  Mass 
might  not  be  said  publicly.  No  Catholic  priest  or  bishop 
might  seek  to  make  proselytes.  No  Catholic  might  teach 
the  young.  If  the  wayward  child  of  a  papist  would  but 
become  an  apostate,  the  law  wrested  for  him  from  his 
parents  a  share  of  their  property.  The  disfranchisement 
of  the  proprietary  related  to  his  creed,  not  to  his  family. 
Such  were  the  methods  adopted  "  to  prevent  the  growth  of 
popery." 

For  a  quarter  of  a  century,  the  administration  of  Mary- 
land resembled  that  of  Virginia.  Nicholson  and  Andros 
were  governors  in  each.  Like  Virginia',  Maryland  had  no 
considerable  town,  was  disturbed  but  little  by  the  Indians, 
and  less  by  the  French.  Its  "  people  were  well-natured 
and  most  hospitable."  Its  staple  was  tobacco ;  yet  hemp  and 
flax  were  raised,  and  both,  like   tobacco,  were  sometimes 

used  as  currency.  In  Somerset  and  Dorchester,  the 
1706.       manufacture  of  linen,  and  even  of  woollen  cloth,  was 

attempted.  Industry  so  opposite  to  the  system  of 
mercantile  monopoly  needed  an  apology ;  and  the  assembly 
pleaded,  in  excuse  of  the  weavers,  that  they  were  driven  to 
their  tasks  "  by  absolute  necessity."  As  Maryland  lies  in 
the  latitude  where,  in  the  collision  of  negro  labor  and  white 
labor,  climate  gives  the  white  man  the  advantage,  and  as 
the  large  introduction  of  slaves  drove  free  laborers  to  more 
northern  regions,  this  province  surpassed  every  other  in  the 
number  of  its  white  servants.     The  market  was  always  sup- 


1715.  THE   SOUTH  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.  213 

plied  with  them,  the  price  varying  from  twelve  to  thirty- 
pounds.   By  its  position,  also,  Maryland  was  connected  with 
the  north ;  it  is  the  most  southern  colony  which,  in  1695,  con- 
sented to  pay  its  quota  towards  the  defence  of  New  York, 
thus  forming,  from  the  Chesapeake  to  Maine,  an  imperfect 
confederacy.     The  union  was  increased  by  a  public 
post.     Eight  times  in  the  year,  letters  might  be  for-       i695. 
warded  from  the  Potomac  to  Philadelphia.     During 
the  period  of  the  royal  government,  the  assembly  still  re- 
tained influence  ;  for  they  refused  to  establish  a  permanent 
revenue.     They  encouraged  tillage ;   exempted  provincial 
vessels  from  a  tax  levied  on  British  shipping ;  recognised 
the  collector  of  parliamentary  customs  by  regulating  his 
fees ;  endeavored  to  obstruct  the  importation  of  negroes  by 
imposing  taxes ;  and  attempted  to  prevent  the  introduction 
of  convicts.    To  show  their  gratitude  for  the  blessings  which 
they  enjoyed,  they  acknowledged   the  title  of  George   I. 
They  promised  a  library  and  a  free  school  to  every  parish. 
The  population  of  the  colony  increased,  but  not  so  rapidly 
as  elsewhere.     The  usual  estimates  for  this  period 
are  too  low.     In  1710,  the  number  of  bond  and  free       nio. 
must  have  exceeded  thirty  thousand ;  yet  a  bounty 
for  every  wolfs  head  continued  to  be  offered  ;  the  roads 
to  the  capital  were  long  marked  by  notches  on  trees ;  and 
water-mills  still  solicited  legislative  encouragement. 
Such  was  Maryland  as  a  royal  province.     In  1715,       1715. 
the  authority  of  the  infant   proprietary  was  vindi- 
cated.    To  recover  his  inheritance,  he  renounced  the  Catho- 
lic Church  for  that   of   England ;    the  persecution  never 
crushed  the  faith  of  the  colonists. 


214  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIX. 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

THE    MIDDLE    STATES    AFTER    THE    REVOLUTION. 

More  happy  than  Lord  Baltimore,  the  proprietary  of 
Pennsylvania  regained  his  rights  without  surrendering  his 
faith.  Accepting  the  resignation  of  the  narrow  and  im- 
perious but  honest  Blackwell,  who,  at  the  period  of  the 
revolution,  acted  as  his  deputy,  the  Quaker  chief  desired 
"  to  settle  the  government  in  a  condition  to  please  the 
generality,"  to  "  let  them  be  the  choosers."  "  Friends," 
such  was  his  message,  "  I  heartily  wish  you  all  well,  and 
beseech  God  to  guide  you  in  the  ways  of  righteousness  and 
peace.  I  have  thought  fit,  upon  my  further  stop  in  these 
parts,  to  throw  all  into  your  hands,  that  you  may  see  the 
confidence  I  have  in  you,  and  the  desire  J  have  to  give 
you  all  possible  contentment."     And,  as  the  council  of  his 

province  was,  at  that  time,  elected  directly  by  the 
jime*2.   people,  that  body  collectively  was   constituted   his 

deputy.  Of  its  members,  Thomas  Lloyd,  from  North 
Wales,  an  Oxford  scholar,  was  universally  beloved  as  a 
bright  example  of  the  integrity  of  virtue.  The  path  of 
preferment  had  opened  to  him  in  England,  but  he  chose 
rather  the  internal  peace  that  springs  from  "  mental  felicity." 
This  Quaker  preacher,  the  oracle  of  "  the  patriot  rustics  " 
on  the  Delaware,  was   now,  by  free    suffrage,  constituted 

president  of  the  council.  But  the  lower  counties 
Nov. 21.  were  jealous  of  the  superior  weight  of  Pennsylvania; 

disputes  respecting  appointments  to  ofiice  grew  up ; 
the  council  divided  ;  protests  ensued  ;  the  members  from  the 

territories  withdrew,  and  would  not  be  reconciled ; 
ApTii'i.  ^^  that,  with  the  reluctant  consent  of  William  Penn, 

who,  though  oppressed  with  persecutions  and  losses, 
never  distrusted  the  people   of  his  province,  and   always 


1692.     *  THE  MIDDLE  STATES.  215 

endured  hardships  as  though  they  "  were,  in  the  end,  every- 
way for  good,"  the  lower  counties  were  constituted  a  govern- 
ment by  themselves  under  Markham.  The  separate  exist- 
ence of  the  commonwealth  of  Delaware  was  the  act  of  its 
own  citizens. 

Uncertainty  rested  on  the  institutions  of  the  prov-  I69i. 
inces;  an  apparent  schism,  among  the  Quakers  in- 
creased the  trouble.  The  ministers  of  England,  fearing  the 
easy  conquest  of  a  colony  of  non-combatants  by  an  enemy, 
were,  in  October,  1691,  inclined  to  annex  Pennsylvania  to 
some  other  province,  and  to  take  it  under  the  immediate 
government  of  the  king.  In  this  design  they  found  an  ally. 
Amidst  the  applause  of  the  opponents  of  Qujikers, 
George  Keith,  conciliating  other  Protestants  by  a  2.' 
more  formal  regard  for  the  Bible,  asserted  his  own 
exclusive  adhesion  to  the  principles  of  Friends  by  pushing 
the  doctrine  of  non-resistance  to  an  absolute  extreme.  No 
true  Quaker,  he  asserted,  can  act  in  public  life  either  as 
a  lawgiver  or  as  a  magistrate.  The  inferences  were  plain ; 
if  Quakers  could  not  be  magistrates  in  a  Quaker  community, 
King  William  must  send  churchmen  to  govern  them.  Con- 
forming his  conduct  to  his  opinion,  Keith  resisted  the  mag- 
istracy of  Pennsylvania  with  defiant  contumely.  The  grand 
jury  found  him  guilty  of  a  breach  of  the  laws ;  an  indict- 
ment, trial,  and  conviction  followed.  The  punishment 
awarded  was  a  fine  of  five  pounds ;  yet,  as  his  offence  was, 
in  its  nature,  a  contempt  of  court,  the  scrupulous  Quakers, 
shunning  the  punishment  of  impertinence,  lest  it  should 
seem  the  punishment  of  opinion,  forgave  the  fine.  Mean- 
time, the  envious  world,  vexed  at  the  society  which  it  could 
neither  corrupt  nor  intimidate,  set  up  the  cry  that  the  Qua- 
kers were  turned  persecutors.  Not  a  word  of  explanation 
would  be  listened  to.  The  expressions  of  indignation, 
which  the  bluntness  of  the  Quaker  magistrates  had  not 
restrained,  were  quoted  as  proofs  of  intolerance.  But,  in 
the  great  conflict  of  parties,  the  devices  of  an 'apostate  to 
deceive  have  but  an  accidental  and  transient  interest :  dis- 
owned by  those  who  had  cherished  and  advanced  him, 
Keith  was  soon  left  without  a  faction,  and  made  a  true  ex- 


216  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIX. 

position  of  his  part  in  the  strife  by  accepting  an  Anglican 
benefice. 

1692.  The  disturbance  by  Keith,  creating  questions  as  to 
Oct.  21.   ^Yie  administration  of  justice,  confirmed  the  disposition 

of  the  English  government  to  subject  Pennsylvania 
ApT%6.  ^^  ^  royal  commission  ;  and,  in  April,  1693,  Benjamin 
Fletcher,  assuming  power  as  governor  for  William  and 
Mary,  once  more  united  Delaware  to  Pennsylvania.  "  Some, 
who  held  commissions  from  the  proprietor,  withdrew  at  the 
publishing  of  their  majesties'  commission,  and  others  refused 
to  act  under  that  power." 

When  the  house  of  representatives  assembled,  re- 
sistance was  developed.  It  was  the  object  of  Fletcher 
to  gain  supplies  ;  the  wary  legislators  were  intent  on  main- 
taining their  privileges.  The  laws  founded  on  the  charter 
of  Penn  they  declare  to  be  "  yet  in  force ;  we  desire  the 
same  may  be  confirmed  to  us  as  our  right  and  liberties." 
"  If  the  laws,"  answered  Fletcher,  "  made  by  virtue  of  Mr. 
Penn's  charter,  be  of  force  to  you,  and  can  be  brought  into 
competition  with  the  great  seal  which  commands  me  hither, 
I  have  no  business  here ; "  and  he  pleaded  the  royal  pre- 
rogative as  inalienable.  "  The  grant  of  King  Charles," 
replied  Joseph  Growdon,  the  speaker,  "is  itself  under  the 
great  seal.     Is  that  charter  in  a  lawful  way  at  an  end  ?  " 

To  reconcile  the  difference,  Fletcher  proposed  to 
May  24.  rc-cnact  the  greater  number  of  the  former  laws.  "  We 
are  but  poor  men,"  said  John  White, "  and  of  inferior 
degree,  and  represent  the  people.  This  is  our  difficulty ; 
we  durst  not  begin  to  pass  one  bill  to  be  enacted  of  our 
former  laws,  least  by  soe  doing  we  declare  the  rest  void." 

1693.  The  royalists  next  started  a  technical  objection : 
May  25.  ^Yiq  old  laws  are  invalid  because  they  do  not  bear 
the  great  seal  of  the  proprietary.  "  We  know  the  laws  to 
be  our  laws,"  it  was  answered ;  "  arid  we  are  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  them  ;  the  sealing  does  not  make  the  law,  but  the 
consent  of  governor,  council,  and  assembly." 

The  same  spirit  pervaded  the  session  ;  and  the  grant  of  a 
penny  in  the  pound,  which,  it  was  promised, "  should  not  be 
dipt  in  blood,"  was  connected  with  a  capitulation  recognising 


1690.  THE  MIDDLE   STATES.  217 

the  legislative  rights  of  the  representatives.  And  a  public 
manifesto,  signed  by  all  the  members  from  Pennsylvania, 
declared  it  to  be  "  the  right  of  the  assembly  that,  before  any 
bill  for  supplies  be  presented,  aggrievances  ought  to  be 
redressed."  "  My  door  was  never  shut,"  said  Fletcher  on 
parting ;  "  but  it  was  avoided,  as  if  it  were  treason  for  the 
speaker,  or  anie  other  representative,  to  be  seen  in  my 
company  during  your  sessions." 

One  permanent  change  in  the  constitution  was  the  fruit 
of  this  administration :  the  house  originated  its  bills,  and 
retained  this  right  ever  after.  Fletcher  would  gladly  have 
changed  the  law  for  "  yearlie  delegates  ; "  for  "  where," 
thought  the  royalist,  "  is  the  hurt,  if  a  good  assemblie  should 
be  continued  from  one  year  to  another  ?  "  But  the  people 
saved  their  privilege  when  they  elected  an  assembly  of  which 
Fletcher  could  "  give  no  good  character  at  Whitehall,"  and 
which  he  could  have  no  wish  to  continue. 

The  assembly  of  the  next  year  was  still  more  im-       i694. 
practicable,  having  for  its  speaker  David  Lloyd,  the 
keenest  discoverer  of  grievances,  and  the  most  quiet  and 
persevering  of   political    scolds.     "  If   you   will   not 
levy  money  to  make  war,"  such  was  the  governor's      May. 
message,  "  yet  I  hope  you  will  not  refuse  to  feed  the 
hungrie  and  clothe  the  naked."     The  assembly  was  willing 
to  give  alms  to  the  sufferers  round  Albany  ;  but  it  claimed 
the  right  of  making  specific  appropriations,  and  collecting 
and  disbursing  the  money  by  ofiicers  of  its  own  appointment. 
The  demand  was  rejected  as  an  infringement  on  the  royal 
prerogative  ;  and,  after  a  fortnight's  altercation,  the  assembly 
was  dissolved.     Such  was  the  success  of  a  royal  governor  in 
Pennsylvania. 

Thrice,  within  two  years  after  the  revolution,  had  Wil- 
liam Penn  been  arrested  and  brought  before  court, 
and  thrice  he  had  been  openly  set  free.  In  1690,  i69o. 
he  prepared  to  embark  once  more  for  America ;  emi- 
grants crowded  round  him  ;  a  convoy  was  granted ;  the 
fleet  was  almost  ready  to  sail,  when,  on  his  return  from  the 
funeral  of  George  Fox,  messengers  were  sent  to  apprehend 
him.     Having  been  thrice  questioned  and  thrice  acquitted, 


218  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIX. 

he  went  into  retirement.  Locke  would  have  interceded 
for  his  pardon  ;  but  Penn  refused  clemency,  waiting  rather 
for  justice.  The  delay  completed  the  wreck  of  his  fortunes; 
sorrow  lowered  over  his  family ;  the  wife  of  his  youth  died ; 
his  eldest  son  had  no  vigorous  hold  on  life ;  even  among 
Friends,  some  cavilled  at  his  conduct ;  Jesuit,  papist,  rogue, 
and  traitor  were  the  gentlest  calumnies  of  the  world ;  yet 
Penn  preserved  his  serenity,  and,  true  to  his  pi-inciples,  in 
a  season  of  passionate  and  almost  universal  war,  published 
a  plea  for  eternal  peace  among  the  nations. 

But,  among  the  many  in  England  whom  Penn  had 
benefited,  gratitude  was  not  extinct.  On  the  restora- 
tion of  the  whigs  to  power,  Rochester,  who,  under  James  II., 
had  given  up  office  rather  than  profess  Romanism,  the  less 
distinguished  Ranelagh,  and  Henry,  the  brother  of  Alger- 
non Sydney,  of  old  the  correspondent  of  the  Prince  of 
Orange,  as  well  as  the  w^arm  friend  of  William  Penn, 
interceded  for  the  restoration  of  the  proprietary  of  Pennsyl- 
vania. "  He  is  my  old  acquaintance,"  answered  William  ; 
"he  may  follow  his  business  as  freely  as  ever;  I  have  noth- 
ing to  say  against  him."  Appearing  before  the  king  in 
council,  his  innocence  was  established ;  and,  in  Au- 
A^ugf20.  g^stj  1694,  the  patent  for  his  restoration  passed  the 

seals. 
1695.         The  pressure  of  poverty  delayed  the  return  of  the 
Mar.  26.  proprietary  to  the  banks  of  the  Delaware ;  and  Mark- 
ham  was  invested  with  the  executive  power.     The 
Sept.  9.    members  of  the  assembly,  which  he  convened,  anx- 
ious for  political  liberties,  which  the  recent  changes 
had  threatened  to  efface,  found  a  remedy  within  themselves, 
and,  assuming  the  power  of  fundamental  legislation,  framed 
a  democratic  constitution.     They  would  have  "  their  privi- 
leges granted  before  they  would  give  anie  monie."     Doubt- 
ful of  the  extent  of  his  authority,  Markham  dissolved  the 
assembly. 

1696.  The  legislature  of  the  next  year,  by  its  own  author- 

^*^^'  ity,  subject  only  to  the  assent  of  the  proprietary, 
established  a  purely  democratic  government.  The  gover- 
nor was  but  chairman  of  the    council.     The  council,  the 


1701.  THE  MIDDLE   STATES.  219 

assembly,  each  was  chosen  by  the  people.  The  time  of 
election,  the  time  of  assembling,  the  period  of  office,  were 
placed  beyond  the  power  of  the  executive.  The  judiciary 
depended  on  the  legislature.  The  people  constituted  them- 
selves the  fountain  of  honor  and  of  power.  When 
the  assembly  next  came  together,  Markham  could  say  May'\*2. 
to  them  :  "  You  are  met,  not  by  virtue  of  any  writ 
of  mine,  but  of  a  law  made  by  yourselves."  The  people 
ruled ;  and,  after  years  of  strife,  all  went  happily.  Nothing 
was  wanting  but  concert  with  the  proprietary. 

Before  the  close  of  the  century,  William  Penn  was     1699. 
once  more  within  his  colony.     The  commonwealth,  •^"^-  ^*^' 
which  had  been  as  an  infant  nestling  under  his  wing,  had 
ripened  into  self-reliance.      Passing  over  all  intermediate 
changes,  the  proprietary  acknowledged  the  present 
validity  of  the  old  fundamental  law.     "  Let's  make  a     ^JJJ.ji^ 
constitution,"  said  a  member  of  the  council,  "  that 
may  be  firm  and  lasting  to  us  and  ours  ;  "  and  Penn  invited 
them  "to  keep  what's  good  in  the  charter  and  frame  of 
government,  to  lay  aside  what  is  burdensome,  and  to  add 
what  may  best  suit  the  common  good."    And  the 
old   charter  was  surrendered,  with   the  unanimous   June  7. 
consent  of  the  assembly  and  council.     Yet  the  coun- 
ties of  Delaware  dreaded  the  loss  of  their  independence  by 
a  union  with  the  extending  population   of  Pennsylvania. 
Besides,  in  the  lower  province,  the  authority  of  William 
Penn  rested  but  on  sufferance  ;  in  the  larger  state,  it 
was  sanctioned  by  a  royal  charter  ;  and  a  passionate       J^JJ- 
strife  delayed  the  establishment  of  government. 

Meantime,  the  proprietary  endeavored  to  remove  the 
jealousy  with  which  his  provinces  were  regarded  in  Eng- 
land. The  parliament  ever  insisted  on  the  colonial  monop- 
oly, and  the  colony  readily  passed  laws  against  piracy  and 
illicit  trade ;  but  it  could  not  assent  to  propitiate  the  Eng- 
lish sovereigns  by  granting  its  quota  for  the  defence  of 
New  York. 

In  regard  to  the  improvement  of  the  negroes,  Penn 
attempted  to  legislate  not  for  the  abolition  of  slavery,  but 
for  the  sanctity  of  marriage  among  the  slaves,  and  for  their 


220  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIX. 

personal  safety.  The  latter  object  was  effected  ;  the  former, 
which  would  have  been  the  forerunner  of  freedom,  was 
defeated. 

Neither  did  philanthropy  achieve  permanent  benefits  for 
the  Indian.  Treaties  of  peace  were  renewed  with  the  men 
of  the  wilderness  from  the  Potomac  to  Oswego,  and  the 
trade  with  them  was  subjected  to  regulations ;  but  they 
could  not  be  won  to  the  faith  or  the  habits  of  civilized  life. 
1710.  These  measures  were  adopted  amidst  the  fruitless 

Aug.  21.  ^ranglings  between  the  delegates  from  Delaware  and 
those  from  Pennsylvania.  At  last,  the  news  was  received 
that  the  English  parliament  was  about  to  render  all  their 
strifes  and  all  their  hopes  nugatory  by  the  general  abroga- 
tion of  every  colonial  charter.  An  assembly  was  summoned 
instantly ;  and,  when  it  came  together,  the  proprietary,  eager 
to  return  to  England  to  defend  the  common  rights 
Sept.  15.  of  himself  and  his  province,  urged  the  perfecting  of 
their  frame  of  government.  "  Since  all  men  are 
mortal,"  such  was  his  weighty  message,  "think  of  some 
suitable  expedient  and  provision  for  your  safety,  as  well  in 
your  privileges  as  property,  and  you  will  find  me  ready  to 
comply  with  whatever  may  render  us  happy  by  a  nearer 
union  of  our  interests.  Review  again  your  laws ;  propose 
new  ones,  that  may  better  your  circumstances ;  and  what 
you  do,  do  it  quickly.  Unanimity  and  despatch  may  con- 
tribute to  the  disappointment  of  those  that  too  long  have 
sought  the  ruin  of  our  young  country." 

The  relations  of  Penn  to  his  colony  were  twofold ;  he 
was  their  sovereign,  and  he  was  the  owner  of  the  unappro- 
priated domain.  The  membei*s  of  the  assembly,  impelled 
by  an  interest  common  to  every  one  of  their  constituents, 
were  disposed  to  encroach  on  his  private  rights.  If  some 
of  their  demands  were  resisted,  he  readily  yielded  every 
thing  which  could  be  claimed,  even  by  inference,  from  his 
promises,  or  could  be  expected  from  his  liberality  ;  making 
his  interests  of  less  consideration  than  the  satisfaction  of 
his  people ;  rather  remitting  than  rigorously  exacting  his 
revenues. 

Of  political  privileges,  he  conceded  all  that  was  desired. 


1708.  THE  MIDDLE  STATES.  221 

The  council,  henceforward  to  be  appointed  by  the  proprie- 
tary, became  a  branch  of  the  executive  government ;  the 
assembly  assumed  to  itself  the  right  of  originating  every 
act  of  legislation,  subject  only  to  the  assent  of  the  governor. 
Elections  to  the  assembly  were  annual ;  the  time  of  its  elec- 
tion and  the  time  of  its  session  were  fixed ;  it  was  to  sit 
upon  its  own  adjournments.  Sheriffs  and  coroners  were 
nominated  by  the  people ;  no  questions  of  property  could 
come  before  the  governor  and  council ;  the  judiciary  was 
left  to  the  discretion  of  the  legislature.  Religious  liberty 
was  established,  and  every  public  employment  was  open  to 
every  man  professing  faith  in  Jesus  Christ.  Happy  Penn- 
sylvania !  While,  in  revolutionized  England,  the  triennial 
parliaments  were  dependent  for  the  time  of  their  election, 
prorogation,  and  dissolution,  on  the  will  of  the  sovereign ; 
while  papists  were  persecuted  and  dissenters  disfranchised, 
in  Pennsylvania  human  rights  were  respected.  The  fun- 
damental law  of  William  Penn,  even  his  detractors  concede, 
was  in  harmony  with  universal  reason,  and  true  to  the 
ancient  and  just  liberties  of  the  people. 

On  returning  to  America,  William  Penn  had  designed  to 
remain  here  for  life,  and  to  give  a  home  to  his  family  and 
his  posterity  in  the  New  World.  But  his  work  was  accom- 
plished. Divesting  himself  and  his  successors  of  all  power 
to  injure,  he  had  founded  a  democracy.  And  now,  having 
given  freedom  and  self-government  to  his  provinces,  no 
strifes  remaining  but  strifes  about  property,  happily  for 
himself,  happily  for  his  people,  happily  for  posterity,  he 
departed  from  the  "  young  countrie  "  of  his  affections,  and 
exiled  himself  to  the  birthplace  of  his  fathers. 

For  the  separation  of  the  territories,  contingent  provision 
had  been  made  by  the  proprietary.     In  1702,  Penn- 
sylvania convened  its  legislature  apart,  and  the  two       1702. 
colonies  were  never  again  united.     The  lower  coun- 
ties became  at  once  almost  an  independent  republic;  for, 
as  the  authority  of  the  proprietary  was  one  of  suffer- 
ance merely  and  was  often   brought  into  question,       1708. 
the   executive   power  intrusted  to  the  governor  of 
Pennsylvania  was  too  feeble  to  limit  the   power  of  the 


222  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIX. 

people.  The  legislature,  the  tribunals,  the  subordinate 
executive  offices  of  Delaware  knew  little  external  control. 
1701  to  The  subsequent  years  in  Pennsylvania  exhibit  con- 
^^^^'  stant  collisions  between  the  proprietary,  as  owner  of 
the  unappropriated  public  territory,  and  a  people  eager  to 
enlarge  their  freeholds.  The  scoldings  of  David  Lloyd  may 
be  consigned  to  oblivion ;  the  integrity  of  the  mildly  aris- 
tocratic James  Logan,  to  whose  judicious  care  the  proprie- 
tary estates  were  intrusted,  has  preserved  a  purity  unsullied 
by  the  accusations  or  impeachments  of  the  assembly.  Strifes 
also  existed  on  political  questions.  The  end  of  government 
was  declared  to  be  the  happiness  of  the  people,  and  from 
this  maxim  the  duties  of  the  governor  were  derived.  But 
the  organization  of  the  judiciary  was  the  subject  of  longest 

controversy.  That  the  tenure  of  the  judicial  office 
1707.       should  be  the  will  of  the  people  was  claimed  as  "the 

people's  right."  The  rustic  legislators  insisted  on 
their  right  to  institute  the  judiciary,  fix  the  rules  of  court, 
define  judicial  power  with  precision,  and  by  request  displace 
judges  for  misbehavior.  Neither  would  they,  even  in  the 
highest  courts,  have  English  lawyers  for  judges.     "Men 

skilled  in  the  law,"  said  they,  "  of  good  integrity,  are 
1706.       very  desirable ;  yet  we  incline  to  be  content  with  the 

best  men  the  colony  affords."  And  the  courts  ob- 
tained no  permanent  organization  till  the  accession  of  the 
house  of  Hanover.  The  civil  constitution  included  feu- 
dalism and  democracy ;  from  this  there  could  be  no  escape 
but  through  the  sovereignty  of  the  people.  Twice,  indeed, 
the  province  had  almost  become  a  royal  one,  —  once  by  act 
of  parliament,  and  once  by  treaty.  But,  in  England,  a  real 
regard  for  the  sacrifices  and  the  virtues  of  William  Penn 
gained  him  friends  among  English  statesmen ;  and  the 
malice  of  pestilent  English  officials,  of  Quarry,  and  the  men 
employed  in  enforcing  the  revenue  laws,  valuing  a  colony 
only  by  the  harvest  it  offered  of  emoluments  and  jobs,  and 
ever  ready  to  appeal  selfishly  to  the  crown,  the  church,  or 
English  trade,  was  never  able  to  overthrow  his  influence. 
His  poverty,  consequent  on  his  disinterested  labors,  created 
a  willingness  to  surrender  his  province  to  the  crown ;  but  he 


1706.  THE  MIDDLE  STATES.  223 

insisted  on  preserving  the  colonial  liberties,  and  the  crown 
hardly  cared  to  buy  a  democracy.  If  the  violent  conflicts 
of  the  assembly,  in  their  eagerness  to  engross  all  authority, 
and  gain  control  over  the  questions  of  property  between  the 
province  and  its  proprietary,  seemed  sometimes  to  compel  a 
surrender  of  his  powers  of  government,  yet  the  bare  appre- 
hension of  such  a  result  always  brought  the  colonists  to  a 
gentler  temper. 

In  the  government  of  Penn,  there  were  an  executive  de- 
pendent for  support  on  the  people  and  all  subordinate  exec- 
utive oflicers  elected  by  the  people  ;  the  judiciary  dependent 
for  its  existence  on  the  people ;  all  legislation  originating 
exclusively  with  the  people  ;  no  fortSj  no  armed  police,  no 
militia ;  perfect  freedom  of  opinion  ;  no  established  church  ; 
no  difference  of  rank ;  and  a  harbor  opened  for  the  reception 
of  all  mankind,  of  children  of  every  language  and  every 
creed.  Could  it  be  that  the  ini^sible  power  of  reason  would 
be  able  to  order  and  to  restrain,  to  punish  crime  and  to 
protect  property,  under  such  a  constitution?  Would  not 
confusion,  discord,  and  rapid  ruin  successively  follow  ?  Or 
was  it  a  conceivable  thing  that,  in  a  country  without  army, 
without  militia,  without  forts,  and  with  no  sheriffs  but  those 
elected  "  by  the  rabble,"  wealth  and  population  should  in- 
crease, and  the  spectacle  be  given  of  the  happiest  and  most 
prospered  land?  Never  did  any  country  enjoy  so  much 
prosperity,  or  increase  so  rapidly  in  wealth  and  numbers, 
as  Pennsylvania. 

In  New  Jersey,  had  the  proprietary  power  been  vested  in 
the  people  or  reserved  to  one  man,  it  would  have  survived ; 
but  it  was  divided  among  speculators  in  land,  who,  as  a 
body,  had  gain,  and  not  freedom,  for  their  end.  In  April, 
1688,  "  the  proprietors  of  East  New  Jersey  had  surrendered 
their  pretended  right  of  government,"  and  the  surrender 
had  been  accepted.  In  October  of  the  same  year,  the 
council  of  the  proprietaries  of  West  New  Jersey  voted  to 
surrender  to  the  secretary-general  for  the  dominion  of  New 
England  "  all  records  relating  to  government."  Thus  the 
whole  province  fell,  with  New  York  and  New  England, 
under  the  consolidated  government  of  Andros.     At  the  rev- 


224  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIX. 

olution,  therefore,  the  sovereignty  over  New  Jersey  was 
merged  in  the  crown  ;  and  the  legal  maxim,  soon  promul- 
gated by  the  lords  of  trade,  that  the  domains  of  the  propri- 
etaries might  be  bought  and  sold,  but  not  their  executive 
power,  weakened  their  attempts  at  the  recovery  of  author- 
ity, and  consigned  the  colony  to  a  temporary  anarchy. 

Will  you  know  with  how  little  government  a  community 
of  husbandmen  may  be  safe  ?  For  twelve  years,  the  prov- 
ince was  not  in  a  settled  condition.  From  June,  1689,  to 
August,  1692,  East  New  Jersey  had  apparently  no  superin- 
tending administration,  being,  in  time  of  war,  destitute  of 
military  officers  as  well  as  of  magistrates  with  royal  or  pro- 
prietary commissions'.  They  were  protected  by  their  neigh- 
bors from  external  attacks ;  and  there  is  no  reason  to  infer 
that  the  several  towns  failed  to  exercise  regulating  powers 
within  their  respective  limits.  Afterwards  commissions 
were  issued  by  two  sets  of  ^proprietors,  of  which  each  had 
its  adherents ;  while  a  third  party,  swayed  by  disgust  at 
the  confusion,  and  by  disputes  about  land  titles,  rejected 
the  proprietaries  altogether.  In  the  western  moiety, 
1689.  Daniel  Coxe,  as  largest  owner  of  the  domain,  claimed 
exclusive  proprietary  powers ;  yet  the  people  dis- 
allowed his  claim,  rejecting  his  deputy  under  the  bad  name 
of  a  Jacobite.  In  1691,  Coxe  conveyed  such  authority  as 
he  had  to  the  West  Jersey  Society ;  and,  in  1692,  Andrew 
Hamilton  was  accepted  as  governor  under  their  commission. 
This  rule,  with  a  short  interruption  in  1698,  continued 
through  the  reign  of  William.  But  the  law  officers 
1694.  of  the  crown  questioned  even  the  temporary  settle- 
ment ;  the  lords  of  trade  claimed  all  New  Jersey  as 
1699.  a  royal  province,  and  proposed  a  settlement  of  the 
question  by  "  a  trial  in  Westminster  Hall  on  a  feigned 
issue."  The  proprietaries,  threatened  with  the  ultimate  in- 
terference of  parliament  in  respect  to  provinces  "  where," 
it  was  said,  "  no  regular  government  had  ever  been  estab- 
lished," resolved  to  resign  their  pretensions.  In  their  nego- 
tiations with  the  crown,  they  wished  to  insist  that  there 
should  be  a  triennial  assembly;  but  King  William,  though 
he  had  against  his  inclination  approved  an  act  of  parlia- 


1702.  THE  MIDDLE   STATES.  225 

ment  of  that  nature  for  England,  would  never  consent  to  it 
in  the  plantations. 

In  the  first  year  of  Queen  Anne,  the  surrender  1702. 
took  place  before  the  privy  council.  The  domain,  ^p^-  ^^* 
ceasing  to  be  connected  with  proprietary  powers,  was,  under 
the  rules  of  private  right,  confirmed  to  its  possessors,  and 
was  never  confiscated.  After  the  revolution,  even  to  the 
present  time,  their  rights  have  been  respected  like  other 
titles  to  estates. 

The  surrender  of  "  the  pretended  "  rights  to  government 
being  completed,  the  two  Jerseys  were  united  in  one  prov- 
ince ;  and  the  government  was  conferred  on  Edward  Hyde, 
Lord  Cornbury,  who,  like  Queen  Anne,  was  the  grandchild 
of  Clarendon.  Retaining  its  separate  legislature,  the  prov- 
ince had  for  the  next  thirty-six  years  the  same  governors  as 
New  York.  It  never  again  obtained  a  charter  :  the 
royal  commission  and  the  royal  instructions  to  Lord  April. 
Cornbury  constituted  the  form  of  its  administration. 
To  the  governor  appointed  by  the  crown  belonged  the 
power  of  legislation,  with  consent  of  the  royal  council  and 
the  representatives  of  the  people.  A  freehold,  or  property 
qualification,  limited  the  elective  franchise.  The  governor 
could  convene,  prorogue,  or  dissolve  the  assembly  at  his 
will,  and  the  period  of  its  duration  depended  on  his  pleas- 
ure. The  laws  were  subject  to  an  immediate  veto  from  the 
governor,  and  a  veto  from  the  crown,  to  be  exercised  at  any 
time.  The  governor,  with  the  consent  of  his  council,  insti- 
tuted courts  of  law,  and  appointed  their  ofiicers.  The  peo- 
ple took  no  part  in  constituting  the  judiciary.  Liberty  of 
conscience  was  granted  to  all  but  papists,  but  favor  was 
invoked  for  the  church  of  England,  of  which,  at  the  same 
time,  the  prosperity  was  made  impossible  by  investing  the 
governor  with  the  right  of  presentation  to  benefices. 

In  suits  at  law,  the  governor  and  council  formed  a  court 
of  appeal :  if  the  value  in  dispute  exceeded  two  hundred 
pounds,  the  English  privy  council  possessed  ultimate  juris- 
diction. Two  instructions  mark,  one  a  declining  bigotry, 
the  other  an  increasing  interest.  "  Great  inconvenience," 
says  Queen  Anne,  "may  arise  by  the  liberty  of  printing 

VOL.  II.  16 


226 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIX. 


in  our  province  "  of  l^ew  Jersey ;  and  therefore  no  print- 
ing-press might  be  kept,  "  no  book,  pamphlet,  or  other 
matters  whatsoever,  be  printed  without  a  license."  And, 
in  conformity  with  English  policy,  especial  countenance 
of  the  traffic  "in  merchantable  negroes"  was  earnestly 
enjoined.  The  courts,  the  press,  the  executive,  became 
dependent  on  the  crown ;  and  the  interests  of  free  labor 
were  sacrificed  to  the  cupidity  of  the  Royal  African  com- 
pany. 

One  method  of  influence  remained  to  the  people  of  New 
Jersey.  The  assembly  must  fix  the  amount  of  its  grants  to 
the  governor.  The  queen  did  not  venture  to  prescribe,  or 
to  invite  parliament  to  prescribe,  a  salary ;  still  less,  herself 
to  concede  it  from  colonial  resources.  Urgent  that  all 
appropriations  should  be  made  directly  for  the  use  of  the 
crown,  to  be  audited  by  her  officers,  she  wished  a  fixed 
revenue  to  be  settled;  but  the  colonial  deliberations  were 
respected,  and  the  wise  assembly,  which  never  established 
a  permanent  revenue,  often  embarrassed  its  votes  of  supplies 
by  insisting  on  an  auditor  of  its  own. 

The  freemen  of  the  colony  were  soon  conscious  of  the 
diminution  of  their  liberties.  For  absolute  religious  free- 
dom, they  obtained  only  toleration ;  for  courts  resting  on 
enactments  of  their  own  representatives,  they  had  courts 
instituted  by  royal  ordinances ;  and  the  sense  of  their  loss 
quickened  their  love  of  freedom  by  an  undefined  sentiment 
of  having  suffered  a  wrong.  By  degrees  they  claimed  to 
hold  their  former  privileges  by  the  nature  of  an  inviolable 
compact.  The  surrender  of  their  charter  could  change  the 
authority  of  the  proprietaries,  but  not  impair  their  conces- 
sions of  political  liberties.  Inured  to  self-reliance  and  self- 
government,  no  thought  of  independence  sprung  up  among 
them ;  but  the  Quakers  and  Puritans  of  East  and  West 
New  Jersey,  cordially  joining  to  vindicate  their  common 
liberties,  never  feared  to  encounter  a  royal  governor,  and 
were  ever  alert  to  resist  encroachments  on  their  rights. 

In  New  York,  the  dread  of  popery  and  despotism 

bewildered  the  hasty  judgment  of  the  less  cultivated. 

There   were   differences   in   origin ;    the   Dutch   were   not 


1689.  THE  MIDDLE   STATES.  227 

blended  with  the  English ;  and  if,  of  the  latter,  the  stern 
dissenters  opposed  the  churchmen  and  those  who  had 
gathered  round  the  royal  governor,  among  the  Dutch  the 
humbler  class  of  people  had  not  amalgamated  with  "the 
gentlemen  of  figure."  From  the  first,  feudal  distinctions 
had  existed  among  the  emigrants  from  Holland.  In  assum- 
ing power,  Leisler  rested  chiefly  for  his  support  upon  the 
less  educated  classes  of  the  Dutch,  and  English  dissenters 
were  not  heartily  his  friends.  The  large  Dutch  landholders, 
many  of  the  English  merchants,  the  friends  to  the  Angli- 
can church,  the  cabal  that  had  gro\^Ti  up  round  the  royal 
governors,  were  his  wary  and  unrelenting  opponents.  But 
his  greatest  weakness  was  in  himself.  Too  restless  to  obey 
and  too  passionate  to  command,  as  a  Presbyterian,  Leis- 
ler was  averse  to  the  church  of  England ;  as  a  man  of 
middling  fortunes,  to  the  aristocracy ;  while,  as  a  Dutch- 
man and  a  Calvinist,  he  was  an  enthusiast  for  William  of 
Orange. 

The  Protestant  insurgents  had,  immediately  after  the 
revolution  in  Xew  England,  taken  possession  of  the  fort  in 
New  York.  A  few  companies  of  militia  sided  with  Leis- 
ler openly,  and  nearly  five  hundred  men  soon  joined  him 
in  arms.  Their  declaration,  published  to  the  world, 
avows  their  purposes :  "  As  soon  as  the  bearer  of  j^^f  3 
orders  from  the  Prince  of  Orange  shall  have  let  us 
see  his  power,  then,  without  delay,  we  do  intend  to  obey, 
not  the  orders  only,  but  also  the  bearer  thereof." 

A  committee  of  safety  of  ten  assumed  the  task  of  June  8. 
rec^ganizing  the  government,  and  Jacob  Leisler  re- 
ceived their  commission  to  command  the  fort  of  New  York. 
Of  this  he  gained  possession  without  a  struggle.    An  address 
to  King  William  was  forwarded,  and  a  letter  from  Leisler 
was  received  by  that  prince,  if  not  with  favor,  yet  with 
respect,  and  without  rebuke.     Nicholson,  the  deputy 
governor,  had  been   heard  to  say,  what  was  after-  July  25. 
wards  often  repeated,  that  the  people  of  New  York 
were  a  conquered  people,  without  claim  to  the  rights  of 
Englishmen ;  that  the  prince  might  lawfully  govern  them 
by  his  own  will,  and  appoint  what  laws  he  pleased.     The 


228  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIX. 

dread  of  this  doctrine  sunk  deeply  into  the  public  mind, 
and  afterwards  attracted  the  notice  of  the  assemblies 
Aug^^ie.  ^^  New  York.  At  that  period  of  disorder,  the  com- 
mittee of  safety  reassembled  ;  and  "  Leisler,  an  inso- 
lent alien,  assisted,"  say  "  the  principal  men  "  of  New  York, 
"by  those  who  formerly  were  thought  unfit  to  be  in  the 
meanest  offices,"  was  constituted  the  temporary  governor  of 
the  province. 

The  appointment  was,  in  its  form,  open  to  censure. 
Courtland,  the  mayor  of  the  city.  Bayard,  and  others  of  the 
council,  after  fruitless  opposition,  retired  to  Albany,  where 
the  magistrates,  in  convention,  proclaimed  their  allegiance 
to  William  and  Mary,  and  their  resolution  to  disregard  the 
authority  of  Leisler.  When  Milborne,  the  son-in-law  of 
Leisler,  first  came  to  demand  the  fort,  he  was  successfully 
resisted.  In  December,  letters  were  received  addressed  to 
Nicholson,  or,  in  his  absence,  to  "  such  as,  for  the  time  being, 
take  care  for  preserving  the  peace  and  administering  the 
law"  in  New  York.  A  commission  to  Nicholson  accom- 
panied them.  The  commission  proved  the  royal  favor  to  be 
with  the  tory  party,  the  friends  of  the  late  government ;  but, 
as  Nicholson  was  absent,  Leisler  esteemed  his  own  authority 
to  have  received  the  royal  sanction. 

1690.  A  warrant  was  issued  for  the  apprehension  of  Bay- 
Jan.  17.  ^j.^ .  g^jj^  Albany,  in  the  spring,  terrified  by  the  calam- 
ity of  an  Indian  invasion,  and  troubled  by  the  anger  and 
the  outrages  of  domestic  factions,  yielded  to  Milborne.  To 
protect  the  frontier,  and  invade  and  conquer  Canada,  was 
the  ruling  passion  of  the  northern  colonies;  but  the  ^m- 
mer  was  lost  in  fruitless  preparations,  and  closed  in  strife. 
Meantime,  a  house  of  representatives  had  been  convened, 
and,  amidst  distress  and  confusion,  the  government  consti- 
tuted by  the  popular  act. 

In  January  of  1691,  the  "Beaver"  arrived  in  New 
York  harbor  with  Ingoldsby,  who  bore  a  commission 
as  captain.     Leisler  offered  him  quarters  in  the  city : 
Jan.  30.  "  Possession  of  his  majesty's  fort  is  what  I  demand," 
replied  Ingoldsby,  and  he  issued  a  proclamation  re- 
quiring submission.     Thus  the  aristocratic  party  obtained  as 


1691.  THE  MIDDLE   STATES.  229 

a  leader  one  who  held  a  commission  from  the  new 
sovereign.     Leisler,  conforming  to  the  original  agree-  j^^^^u 
ment  made  with  his  fellow-insurgents,   replied  that 
Ingoldsby  had  produced  no  order  from  the  king,  or  from 
Sloughter,  who,  it  was  known,  had  received  a  commission 
as  governor,  and,  promising  him  aid  as  a  military 
officer,  refused  to  surrender  the  fort.     The  troops,  as    Feb.  i. 
they  landed,  were   received   with  all  courtesy  and 
accommodation  ;    yet   passions  ran  high,  and  a  shot  even 
was   fired    at    them.      The  outrage  was    severely  reproved 
by  Leisler,  who,  amidst  proclamations   and  counter- 
proclamations,  promised  obedience  to  Sloughter  on  Mar.  lo. 
his  arrival. 

On  the  evening  on  which  the  profligate,  needy.  Mar.  19. 
and  narrow-minded  adventurer,  who  held  the  royal 
commission,  arrived  in  New  York,  Leisler  sent  messengers 
to  receive  his  orders.    The  messengers  were  detained. 
Next  morning,  he  asked,  by  letter,  to  whom  he  should  Mar.  20. 
surrender  the  fort.     The  letter  was  unheeded ;  and 
Sloughter,   giving   no    notice   to    Leisler,    commanded    In- 
goldsby  "  to   arrest   Leisler,    and    the   persons    called    his 
council." 

The  prisoners,  eight  in  number,  were  promptly  arraigned 
before  a  special  court  constituted  for  the  purpose  by  an 
ordinance,  and  having  inveterate  royalists  as  judges.  Six 
of  the  inferior  insurgents  made  their  defence,  were  con- 
victed of  high  treason,  and  were  reprieved.  Leisler  and 
Milborne  denied  to  the  governor  the  power  to  institute  a 
tribunal  for  judging  his  predecessor,  and  they  appealed  to 
the  king.  On  their  refusal  to  plead,  they  were  condemned 
of  high  treason  as  mutes,  and  sentenced  to  death ;  Joseph 
Dudley,  of  New  England,  now  chief  justice  of  New  York, 
giving  the  opinion  that  Leisler  had  had  no  legal  au- 
thority whatever.  "  Certainly  never  greater  villains  May  7. 
lived,"  wrote  Sloughter ;  but  he  "  resolved  to  wait 
for  the  royal  pleasure,  if  by  any  other  means  than  hanging 
he  could  keep  the  country  quiet." 

Meantime,  the  assembly,  for  which  warrants  had  Aprils, 
been   issued   on   the   day   of    Leisler's   arrest,  came 


230  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIX. 

together.      In   its    character    it   was    thoroughly   royalist, 
establishing  a  revenue,  and  placing  it  in  the  hands  of  the 
receiver-general,    at  the  mercy  of   the  governor's  warrant. 
It  passed  several  resolves  against  Leisler,  especially  declar- 
ing his  conduct  at  the  fort  an  act  of  rebellion ;  and  Slough- 
ter,  in  a  time  of  excitement,  assented  to  the  vote  of 
May^i4.  ^^^    council,   that   Leisler   and    Milborne  should  be 
executed.      "  The  house,  according  to  their  opinion 
May  15.  given,  did  approve  of  what  his  excellency  and  coun- 
cil had  done." 
Accordingly,  on  the  next  day,  amidst  a  drenching  rain, 
Leisler,  parting  from  his  wife  Alice  and  his  numerous  fam- 
ily, was,  with  his  son-in-law,  Milborne,  led  to  the  gal- 
May  i6.  lows.      Both   acknowledged   the   errors  which   they 
had  committed  "through  ignorance  and  jealous  fear, 
through  rashness  and  passion,  through  misinformation  and 
misconstruction  ; "  in    other   respects,   they   asserted   their 
innocence,  which  their  blameless    private  lives   confirmed. 
"  Weep  not  for  us,  who  are  departing  to  our  God,"  —  these 
were  Leisler's  words  to  his  oppressed  friends,  —  "  but  weep 
for  yourselves,  that  remain  behind  in  misery  and  vexation ; " 
adding,  as  the  handkerchief  was  bound  round  his  face,  "  I 
hope  these  eyes  shall  see  our  Lord  Jesus  in  heaven."     Mil- 
borne exclaimed :  "  I  die  for  the  king  and  queen,  and  the 
Protestant  religion,  in  which  I  was  born  and  bred.     Father, 
into  thy  hands  I  commend  my  spirit." 

The  appeal  to  the  king,  which  had  not  been  permitted 
during  their  lives,  was  made  by  Leisler's  son ;  and,  though 
the  committee  of  lords  of  trade  reported  that  the  forms  of 
law  had  not  been  broken,  the  estates  of  "  the  deceased  " 
were  restored  to  their  families.  Dissatisfied  with  this  im- 
perfect redress,  the  friends  of  Leisler  and  Milborne,  with 
the  assent  of  the  king,  persevered  till,  in  1695,  an  act  of 
parliament,  strenuously  but  vainly  opposed  by  Dudley,  re- 
versed the  attainder.  In  New  York,  their  partisans,  whom 
a  royalist  of  that  day  described  as  "  the  meaner  sort  of  the 
inhabitants,"  and  who  were  distinguished  always  by  their 
zeal  for  toleration,  for  opposition  to  the  doctrine  of  legiti- 
macy, formed  a  powerful,  and  ultimately  a  successful,  party. 


1692.  THE  MIDDLE  STATES.  231 

The  rashness  and  incompetency  of  Leisler  were  forgotten 
in  sympathy  for  the  judicial  murder  by  which  he  fell ;  and 
the  principles  which  he  upheld,  though  his  opponents  might 
rail  at  equality  of  suffrage  and  demand  for  the  man  of 
wealth  as  many  votes  as  he  held  estates,  necessarily  became 
the  principles  of  the  colony. 

There  existed  in  the  province  no  party  which  would  i69i. 
Bacrihce  colonial  freedom.  Even  the  legislature  of 
1691,  composed  of  the  deadly  enemies  of  Leisler,  asserted 
the  right  to  a  representative  government,  and  to  English 
liberties,  to  be  inherent  in  the  people,  and  not  a  consequence 
of  the  royal  favor  of  King  William.  "  No  tax  whatever 
shall  be  levied  on  his  majestie's  subjects  in  the  province,  or 
qn  their  estates,  on  any  pretence  whatsoever,  but  by  the  act 
and  consent  of  the  representatives  of  the  people  in  general 
assembly  convened;"  "supreme  legislative  power  belongs 
to  the  governor  and  council,  and  to  the  people  by  their 
representatives : "  such  was  the  voice  of  the  most  royalist 
assembly  that  could  ever  be  convened  in  New  York.  King 
William  would  not  approve  the  act  by  which  "  a  subordinate 
legislature  declared  its  own  privileges ; "  but  it  was  even 
printed  among  the  laws  in  force  in  New  York  without  any 
notice  of  its  disallowance.  "  New  England,"  wrote  the 
royalist  councillors,  "has  poisoned  the  western  parts,  for- 
merly signal  for  loyal  attachments,  with  her  seditious  and 
anti-monarchical  principles." 

In  the  administration  of  the  covetous  and  pas-  1692. 
sionate  Fletcher,  a  man  of  great  mobility  and  feeble  ^^^*" 
judgment,  the  people  of  New  York,  whom  he  described  as 
"  divided,  contentious,  and  impoverished,"  were  disciplined 
into  more  decided  resistance.  As  to  territory,  the  policy 
of  consolidating  provinces  was  revived ;  for  the  security  of 
the  central  province,  the  command  of  the  militia  of  New 
Jersey  and  Connecticut  was,  by  a  royal  commission,  con- 
ferred on  Fletcher,  and  he  was  invested  with  powers  of 
government  in  Pennsylvania  and  Delaware. 

An  address  was  sent  to  the  king,  representing  the  great 
cost  of  defending  the  frontiers,  and  requesting  that  the 
neighboring  colonies  might  contribute  to  the  protection  of 


232  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIX. 

Albany.  The  necessity  of  common  defence  in  this 
1695.       age  led  only  to  instructions.     All  the  colonies  north 

of  Carolina  were  directed  to  furnish  quotas  for  the 
defence  of  New  York  or  the  attacks  on  Canada;  but  the 
instructions,  though  urgently  renewed,  were  never  enforced, 
and  were  by  some  colonies  openly  disregarded. 

In  its  relations  towards  Canada,  New  York  shared  the 
passion  for  conquest,  which  gradually  extended  to  other 
colonies.  In  its  internal  affairs,  bordering  on  Puritan  New 
England,  it  is  the  most  northern  province  that  admitted  by 
enactment  the  partial  establishment  of  the  Anglican  church. 
The  Presbyterians  had  introduced  themselves  under  com- 
pacts with  the  Dutch  government.  The  original  settlers 
from  the  Netherlands  were  Calvinists,  yet  with  a  church 
organization  far  less  popular  than  that  of  New  England, 
and  having  in  some  degree  sympathy  with  the  ecclesiastical 
polity  of  Episcopacy.  During  the  ascendency  of  the  Dutch, 
it  had  often  been  asserted  in  an  exclusive  spirit ;  when  the 
colony  became  English,  the  conquest  was  made  by  men  de- 
voted to  the  English  throne  and  the  English  church,  and 
the  influence  of  churchmen  became  predominant  in  the 
council.  The  idea  of  toleration  was  still  imperfect  in  New 
Netherland.  It  is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  the  efforts  of 
Fletcher  to  privilege  the  English  service  were  partially  suc- 
cessful. The  house  framed  a  bill,  in  which  they  established 
certain  churches  and  ministers,  reserving  the  right  of  pres- 
entation  to  the  vestrymen  and  church-wardens.  The  gov- 
ernor, interpreting  the  act,  limited  its  meaning  to  the 
English  form  of  worship,  and  framed  an  amendment  giving 
the  right  of  presentation  to  the  representative  of  the  crown. 
The  assembly  asserted  it  for  the  people,  rejecting  the 
amendment.  "Then  I  must  tell  you,"  retorted  Fletcher, 
this  "  seems  very  unmannerly.  There  never  was  an  amend- 
ment desired  by  the  council  board  but  what  was  rejected. 
It  is  a  sign  of  a  stubborn  ill-temper.  I  have  the  power  of 
collating  or  suspending  any  minister  in  my  government 
by  their  majesties'  letters  patent ;  and,  whilst  I  stay  in  this 
government,  I  will  take  care  that  neither  heresy,  schism, 
nor  rebellion,  be  preached  among  you,  nor  vice  and  pro- 


THE  MIDDLE   STATES.  233 

fanity  encouraged.     You  seem  to   take  the  whole  power 
into  your  hands,  and  set  up  for  every  thing." 

The  "  stubborn  temper  "  of  the  house  was  immov-  1695. 
able ;  and,  two  years  afterwards,  that  the  act  might  ^^^-  ^^' 
not  be  construed  too  narrowly,  it  was  declared  that  the 
vestrymen  and  church-wardens  of  the  church  established  in 
New  York  might  call  a  Protestant  minister  who  had  not 
received  Episcopal  ordination.  Not  a  tenth  part  of  the 
population  of  that  day  adhered  to  the  Episcopal  Church ; 
the  public  spirit  demanded  toleration ;  and  if,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  English  church  succeeded  in  engrossing  the  pro- 
vision made  by  public  acts  for  the  ministry,  on  the  other, 
the  dissenters  were  wakened  to  jealousy,  lest  the  Episcopal 
party,  deriving  countenance  from  England,  might  nourish 
a  lust  for  dominion.  To  the  mixed  races  of  legislators  in 
the  province,  the  governor,  in  1697,  said  :  "  There  are  none 
of  you  but  what  are  big  with  the  privileges  of  Englishmen 
and  Magna  Charta." 

The  differences  were  tranquillized  in  the  short  adminis- 
tration of  the  kindlier  Earl  of  Bellomont,  an  Irish  peer, 
with  a  sound  heart  and  honorable  sympathies  for  popular 
freedom.  He  arrived  in  New  York  after  the  peace 
of  Kyswick,  with  a  commission  extending  to  the  ^{,^^"2 
borders  of  Canada,  including  New  York,  New  Jersey, 
and  all  New  England,  except  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island. 
In  New  York,  Bellomont,  who  had  served  on  the  committee 
of  parliament  to  inquire  into  the  trials  of  Leisler  and  Mil- 
borne,  was  indifferent  to  the  little  oligarchy  of  the  royal 
council,  of  which  he  reproved  the  vices  and  resisted  the 
selfishness.  The  memory  of  Leisler  was  revived ;  and  the 
assembly,  by  an  appropriation  of  its  own  in  favor  of  his 
family,  confirmed  the  judgment  of  the  English  parliament. 

The  enforcement  of  the  acts  of  trade,  which  had  been 
violated  by  the  connivance  of  men  appointed  to  execute 
them ;  and  the  suppression  of  piracy,  which,  as  the  turbu- 
lent offspring  of  long  wars  and  of  the  false  principles  of  the 
commercial  systems  of  that  age,  infested  every  sea  from 
America  to  China,  —  were  the  great  purposes  of  Bellomont ; 
yet  for  both  he  accomplished  little.     The  acts  of  trade, 


234  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIX. 

despotic  in  their  nature,  contradicting  the  rights  of  hu- 
manity, were  evaded  everywhere ;  but  in  New  York,  a  city, 
in  part,  of  aliens,  owing  allegiance  to  England,  without  the 
bonds  of  common  history,  kindred,  and  tongue,  they  were 
disregarded  without  scruple.  No  voice  of  conscience  de- 
clared their  violation  a  moral  offence ;  respect  for  them  was 
but  a  calculation  of  chances.  In  the  attempt  to  suppress 
piracy,  the  prospect  of  infinite  booty  to  be  recovered  from 
pirates,  or  to  be  won  from  the  enemies  of  England,  had 
gained  from  the  king  and  the  admiralty  a  commission  for 
William  Kidd,  and  had  deluded  Bellomoiit  into  a  partner- 
ship in  a  private  expedition.  Failing  in  his  hopes  of  opu- 
lence, Kidd  found  his  way  as  a  pirate  to  the  gallows.  In 
the  house  of  commons,  the  transaction  provoked  inquiry, 
and  hardly  escaped  censure. 

Neither  war  nor  illiberal  legislation  could  retard  the 
growth  of  the  city  of  New  York  in  commerce,  in  wealth, 
and  in  numbers.  The  increased  taxes  were  imposed  with 
equity  and  collected  with  moderation.  "  I  will  pocket  none 
of  the  public  money  myself,  nor  shall  there  be  any  embez- 
zlement by  others,"  was  the  honest  promise  of  Bellomont ; 
and  the  necessity  of  the  promise  is  the  strongest  com- 
mentary upon  the  character  of  his  predecessors.  The  con- 
fiding house  of  representatives  voted  a  revenue  for  six 
years,  and  placed  it,  as  before,  at  the  disposition  of  the 
governor.  His  death  interrupted  the  short  period  of  har- 
mony in  the  colony;  and,  happily  for  New  York,  Lord 
Cornbury,  his  successor,  had  every  vice  of  character  neces- 
sary to  discipline  a  colony  into  self-reliance  and  resistance. 

Of  the  same  family  with  the  queen  of  England ;  brother- 
in-law  to  a  king  whose  service  he  had  betrayed ;  the  grand- 
son of  a  prime  minister;  himself  heir  to  an  earldom,  —  Lord 
Cornbury,  destitute  of  the  virtues  of  the  aristocracy,  illus- 
trated the  worst  form  of  its  arrogance,  joined  to  intellectual 
imbecility.  Of  the  sagacity  of  the  common  mind,  of  its 
firmness,  he  knew  nothing ;  of  political  power  he  had  no 
conception,  except  as  it  emanates  from  the  self-will  of  a 
superior  ;  to  him  popular  rights  existed  only  as  a  condescen- 
sion.    Educated  at  Geneva,  he  yet   loved   Episcopacy   as 


1705.  THE  MIDDLE   STATES.  235 

a  religion  of  state  subordinate  to  executive  power.  And 
now,  at  about  forty  years  of  age,  with  self-will  and  the 
pride  of  rank  for  his  counsellors,  without  fixed  principles, 
without  perception  of  political  truth,  he  stood  among  mixed 
people  of  New  Jersey  and  of  New  York  as  their  governor. 

The  royalists  anticipated  his  arrival  with  the  in- 
cense of  flattery ;  and  the  hospitality  of  the  colony, 
which  was  not  yet  provoked  to  defiance,  elected  a  house  of 
assembly  disposed  to  confide  in  the  integrity  of  one  who 
had  been  represented  as   a  friend  to   Presbyterians.     The 
expenses  of  his  voyage  were  compensated  by  a  grant  of  two 
thousand  pounds,    and  an    annual  revenue   for  the  public 
service  provided  for  a  period  of  seven  years.     In  April, 
1703,  a  further  grant  was  made  of  fifteen  hundred  pounds 
to  fortify  the  Narrows,  "  and  for  no  other  use  whatever." 
But  Lord  Cornbury  cared  little  for  the  limitations  of  a  pro- 
vincial assembly.     The  money,  by  his  warrant,  disappeared 
from  the  treasury,  while  the  Narrows  were  left  defenceless ; 
and  the  assembly,  awakened  to  distrust,  by  addresses 
to  the  governor  and  the  queen  solicited  a  treasurer     jj^^ 
of  its  own   appointment.     The  governor  sought  to 
hide  his  own  want  of  integrity  by  reporting  to  the  lords  of 
trade  that  "  the  colonies  were  possessed  with  an  opinion 
that  their  assemblies  ought  to  have  all  the  privileges  of  a 
house  of  commons ;  but  how  dangerous  this  is,"  he 
adds,  "  I  need  not  say."     The  general  revenue  had       i704. 
been  fixed  for  a  period  of  years ;  no  new  appropria- 
tions could  be  extorted ;  and,  heedless  of  menaces  or  solici- 
tations, the  representatives  of  the  people  in   1704  asserted 
"  the  rights  of  the  house."     Lord  Cornbury  answered  :  "  I 
know  of  no  right  that  you  have  as  an  assembly,  but  such  as 
the  queen  is  pleased  to  allow  you."     Broughton,  the  attor- 
ney-general in  New  York,  reported  in  the  same  year  that 
"  republican  spirits  "  were  to  be  found  there.      The 
firmness  of  the  assembly  won  its  first  victory  ;    for       1705. 
the  queen  permitted  specific  appropriations  of  inci- 
dental grants  of  money,  and  the  appointment  by  the  general 
assembly  of  its  own  treasurer  to  take  charge  of  extraordi- 
nary supplies. 


236  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIX. 

In  affairs  relating  to  religion,  Lord  Cornbury  was  equally 
imperious,  disputing  the  right  of  ministers  or  schoolmasters 
to  exercise  their  vocation  without  his  license.  The  question 
of  the  freedom  of  the  pulpit  no  longer  included  the  whole 
question  of  intellectual  freedom  ;  the  victory  for  toleration 
had  been  won ;  and  the  spirit  of  political  freedom  found 
its  organ  in  the  provincial  legislature.  His  long  undetected 
forgery  of  a  standing  instruction  in  favor  of  the  English 
church  led  only  to  acts  of  petty  tyranny,  useless  to  English 
interests,  degrading  the  royal  prerogative,  .and  benefiting 
the  people  by  compelling  their  active  vigilance.  The 
power  of  the  people  redressed  the  griefs.  If  Francis  Make- 
mie,  a  Presbyterian,  was  indicted  for  preaching  without  a 
license  from  the  governor;  if  the  chief  justice  advised  a 
special  verdict,  —  the  jury,  composed,  it  is  said,  of  Episco- 
palians, constituted  themselves  the  judges  of  the  law,  and 
readily  agreed  on  an  acquittal.  In  like  manner,  at  Jamaica, 
the  church  which  the  whole  town  had  erected  was,  by  the 
connivance  of  Cornbury,  reserved  exclusively  for  the  Epis- 
copalians ;  an  injustice  which  was  reversed  in  the  colonial 
courts. 

1708.  Twice  had  Cornbury  dissolved  the  assembly.  The 
Aug.  19.  tjiii-d  which  he  convened  proved  how  rapidly  the 
political  education  of  the  people  had  advanced.  Dutch, 
English,  and  New  England  men  were  all  of  one  spirit. 
The  rights  of  the  people,  with  regard  to  taxation,  to  courts 
of  law,  to  officers  of  the  crown,  were  asserted  with  an  energy 
to  which  the  governor  could  offer  no  resistance.  Without 
presence  of  mind,  subdued  by  the  colonial  legislature,  and 
now  appearing  as  dispirited  as  he  was  indigent,  he  submitted 
to  the  ignominy  of  reproof,  and  thanked  the  assembly  for 
the  simplest  act  of  justice. 

In  New  Jersey  there  were  the  same  demands  for  money, 

and  a  still  more  wary  refusal ;  representatives,  elected 
1704.       by  a  majority  of  votes,  excluded  by  the  governor; 

assemblies  convened,  and  angrily  dissolved.  At  last, 
necessity  compelled  a  third  assembly,  and  among  its  members 
were  Samuel  Jennings  and  Lewis  Morris.  The  latter  was  of 
a  liberal  mind,  yet  having  no  fixed  system ;  intrepid,  but 


1709.  THE  MIDDLE   STATES. 


237 


not  exclusive.  The  former,  elected  speaker  of  the  assembly, 
was  a  true  Quaker,  of  a  hasty  yet  benevolent  temper,  faith- 
ful in  his  affections,  "stiff  and  impracticable  in  politics." 
These  are  they  whom  Lord  Cornbury  describes  "  as  capable 
of  any  thing  but  good ; "  whom  Quarry  and  other  subser- 
vient counsellors  accuse  as  "  turbulent  and  disloyal,"  "  en- 
couraging the  governments  in  America  to  throw  off  the 
royal  prerogative,  declaring  openly  that  the  royal  instruc- 
tions bind  no  further  than  they  are  warranted  by  law." 
The  assembly,  according  to  the  usage  of  that  day, 
wait  on  the  governor  with  their  remonstrance.  The  April?. 
Quaker  speaker  reads  it  for  them  most  audibly.  It 
charges  Cornbury  with  accepting  bribes ;  it  deals  sharply 
with  "his  new  methods  of  government,"  his  "encroach- 
ment" on  the  popular  liberties  by  "assuming  a  negative 
voice  to  the  freeholders'  election  of  their  representatives;" 
"  they  have  neither  heads,  hearts,  nor  souls,  that  are  not  for- 
ward with  their  utmost  power  lawfully  to  redress  the  mis- 
eries of  their  country."  "  Stop  ! "  exclaimed  Cornbury,  as 
the  undaunted  Quaker  delivered  the  remonstrance  ;  and 
Jennings  meekly  and  distinctly  repeated  the  charges,  with 
greater  emphasis  than  before.  What  could  Cornbury  do  ? 
He  attempted  to  retort,  charging  the  Quakers  with  dis- 
loyalty and  faction ;  and  they  answered,  in  the  words  of 
Nehemiah  to  Sanballat :  "  There  is  no  such  thing  done  as 
thou  sayest,  but  thou  feignest  them  out  of  thine  own  heart." 
And  they  left,  for  the  instruction  of  future  governors,  this 
weighty  truth :  "  To  engage  the  affections  of  the  people, 
no  artifice  is  needful  but  to  let  them  be  unmolested  in  the 
enjoyment  of  what  belongs  to  them  of  right." 

Lord  Cornbury  had  fulfilled  his  mission  ;  more  successful 
than  any  patriot,  he  had  taught  New  York  the  necessity 
and  the  methods  of  incipient  resistance.  The  assem- 
bly which  met  Lord  Lovelace,  his  short-lived  sue-  ^prii. 
cessor,  began  the  contest  that  was  never  to  cease  but 
with  independence.  The  crown  demanded  a  permanent 
revenue,  without  appropriation ;  New  York  henceforward 
would  -raise  only  an  annual  revenue,  and  appropriate  it 
specifically.     That  province  was  struggling  to  make  the  in- 


238  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIX. 

crease  of  the  power  of  the  assembly  an  open  or  tacit  condi- 
tion of  every  grant.  The  provincial  revenue,  as  established 
by  law,  would  not  expire  till  1709 ;  but  the  war  demanded 
extraordinary  supplies ;  and,  in  1704,  the  moneys  voted  by 
the  assembly  were  to  be  disbursed  by  its  own  officers.  The 
royal  council,  instructed  from  England,  would  have  no 
money  expended  but  by  the  warrant  of  the  governor  and 
council ;  but  the  delegates  resolved  that  "  it  is  inconvenient 
to  allow  the  council  to  amend  money  bills ; "  and  council, 
governor,  and  board  of  trade  yielded  to  the  fixed  will  of 
the  representatives  of  the  people.  In  1705,  the  assembly 
were  allowed  by  the  queen  "  to  name  their  own  treasurer, 
when  they  raised  extraordinary  supplies ;  "  and  by  degi*ees 

all  legislative  grants  came  to  be  regarded  as  such, 
^l^lo^    and  to  be  placed  in  the  keeping  of   the    treasurer 

of  the  assembly,  beyond  the  control  of  the  gov- 
ernor. In  1708,  the  delegates,  after  claiming  for  the 
people  the  choice  of  coroners,  made  a  solemn  declaration 
that  "the  levying  of  money  upon  her  majesty's  subjects 
in  this  colony,  under  any  pretence  whatsoever,  without 
consent  in  general  assembly,  is  a  grievance ; "  and,  in 
1709,  as  the  condition  of  joining  in  an  effort  against  Can- 
ada, the  legislature  assumed  executive  functions.  In  the 
same  year,  by  withholding  grants,  they  prepared  to  compel 
their  future  governors  to  an  annual  capitulation. 

In  1710,  Cornbury's  successor,  Robert  Hunter,  the 

friend  of  Swift,  the  ablest  in  the  series  of  -the  royal 
governors  of  New  York,  a  man  of  good  temper  and  discern- 
ment, whom  the  whig  ministry  enjoined  to  suppress  the 
"  illegal  trade  still  carried  on  with  the  Dutch  islands,"  and 
with  the  enemy  under  "  flags  of  truce,"  found  himself  in  his 
province  powerless  and  without  a  salary.  He  writes  of  his 
government  to  a  friend  :  "  Here  is  the  finest  air  to  live  upon 
in  the  universe :  the  soil  bears  all  things,  but  not  for  me ; 
for,  according  to  the  custom  of  the  country,  the  sachems  are 
the  poorest  of  the  people."     "  Sancho  Panza  was  indeed  but 

a  type  of  me."  In  less  than  five  months  after  his 
Sept.  1.    arrival,   he   was   disputing   with   an  assembly.     As 

they  would  neither   grant   appropriations  for   more 


1710.  THE  MIDDLE   STATES.  239 

than  a  year,  nor  give  up  the  supervision  of  their  own  treas- 
urer over  payments  from  the  public  revenue,  they  were  pro- 
rogued and  dissolved. 

Perceiving  that  their  conduct  was  grounded  on  perma- 
nent motives,  he  made  his  report  accordingly;  and  his 
letters  reached  England  when  Saint-John,  a  young  man 
of  thirty,  afterwards  Lord  Bolingbroke,  had  become  secre- 
tary of  state.  In  March,  1711,  a  bill  was  drawn  under  the 
superintendence  of  the  board  of  trade,  reciting  the  neglect 
of  the  general  assembly  of  New  York  to  continue  the  taxes 
which  had  been  granted  in  all  the  previous  sixteen  years, 
and  imposing  them  by  act  of  parliament.  Sir  Edward 
Northey  and  Sir  Robert  Raymond,  the  attorney  and  solici- 
tor generals,  both  approved  the  bill ;  but  it  was  intended 
as  a  measure  of  intimidation,  and  not  to  be  passed.  Mean- 
time, Hunter  wrote  to  Saint-John  "  that  the  colonies  were 
then  infants  at  their  mother's  breasts,  but  such  as  would 
wean  themselves  when  they  came  of  age." 

The  desire  to  conquer  Canada  prevailed,  in  the  summer 
of  1711,  to  obtain  for  that  purpose  a  specific  grant  of  bills  of 
credit  for  ten  thousand  pounds.  But  when  fresh  instruc- 
tions, with  a  copy  of  the  bill  for  taxing  New  York  by  parlia- 
ment, were  laid  before  the  assembly,  no  concession  was  made. 
The  council,  claiming  the  right  to  make  amendments  to  the 
money  bills,  asserted  that  the  house,  like  itself,  existed  only 
"by  the  mere  grace  of  the  crown  ;  "  but  the  assembly,  defy- 
ing the  opinion  of  the  lords  of  trade,  as  concluding  nothing, 
rose  to  the  doctrine  required  by  the  emergency.  The  share 
of  the  council  in  legislation,  they  agree,  comes  "  from  the 
mere  pleasure  of  the  prince ; "  but  for  themselves  they 
claim  an  "  inherent  right "  to  legislation,  springing  "  not 
from  any  commission  or  grant  from  the  crown,  but  from 
the  free  choice  and  election  of  the  people,  who  ought  not, 
nor  justly  can,  be  divested  of  their  property  without  their 
consent." 

At  the  time  of  this  controversy.  Saint- John,  better  known 
as  Lord  Bolingbroke,  was  secretary  for  the  colonies.  Mak- 
ing to  him  a  report  of  these  proceedings.  Hunter  wrote: 
"  Now  the  mask  is  thrown  off.     The  delegates  have  called 


240  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXIX. 

in  question  the  council's  share  in  the  legislature,  trumped 
up  an  inherent  right,  declared  the  powers  granted  by  her 
majesty's  letters  patent  to  be  against  law,  and  have  but  one 
short  step  to  make  towards  what  I  am  unwilling  to  name. 
The  assemblies,  claiming  all  the  privileges  of  a  house  of 
commons,  and  stretching  them  even  beyond  what  they  were 
ever  imagined  to  be  there,  should  the  councillors  by  the  same 
rule  lay  claim  to  the  rights  of  a  house  of  peers,  here  is  a  body 
co-ordinate  with,  and  consequently  independent  of,  the  great 
council  of  the  realm ;  yet  this  is  the  plan  of  government  they 
all  aim  at,  and  make  no  scruple  to  own."  "  Unless  some 
speedy  and  effectual  remedy  be  applied,  the  disease  will 
become  desperate."  "  If  the  assembly  of  New  York,"  re- 
ported the  lords  of  trade,  in  1712,  "is  suffered  to  proceed 
after  this  manner,  it  may  prove  of  very  dangerous  conse- 
quence to  that  province,  and  of  very  ill  example  to  the 
other  governments  in  America,  who  are  already  but  too 
much  inclined  to  assume  pretended  rights,  tending  to  in- 
dependency on  the  crown."  And  Hunter,  as  he  saw  the 
province  add  to  its  population  at  least  one  third  in  the 
reign  of  Anne,  mused  within  himself  on  "  what  the  conse- 
quences were  likely  to  be,  when,  upon  such  an  increase,  not 
only  the  support  of"  the  royal  "government,  but  the  incli- 
nation of  the  people  to  support  it  at  all,  decreases."  Again 
the  board  of  trade  instructed  him  as  to  what  the  legislature 
should  do,  and  the  legislature  remained  inflexible.  The 
menacing  mandates  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne  had  but 
increased  the  ill  humor  of  New  York. 


1690.       NEW  ENGLAND  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.        241 


CHAPTER    XXX. 

NEW   ENGLAND    AFTER    THE    EEVOLTTTION. 

New  York  would  willingly  have  extended  her  boundary 
over  a  part  of  Connecticut ;  but  the  people  of  the  colony 
themselves  vindicated  its  liberties  and  the  integrity 
of  its  territory.  Governor  Treat  having,  in  May,  ^^ay'g. 
1689,  resumed  his  office,  the  assembly,  which  soon 
convened,  obeying  the  declared  opinion  of  the  freemen, 
organized  the  government  according  to  their  charter. 

On  the  joyful  news  of  the  accession  of  William  May  26. 
and  Mary,  every  fear  vanished,  every  countenance 
brightened  with  joy.     ''  Great  was  that  day,"  said 
the  loyal  address  of  Connecticut  to  King  William,  June  i3. 
"when  the  Lord,  who  sitteth   upon  the  floods,  did 
divide  his  and  your  adversaries  like  the  waters  of  Jordan, 
and  did  begin  to  magnify  you  like  Joshua,  by  the  deliver- 
ance of  the  English  dominions  from  popery  and  slavery. 
Because  the  Lord  loved  Israel  for  ever,  therefore  hath  he 
made  you  king,  to  do  justice  and  judgment."     And,  de- 
scribing their  acquiescence  in  the  rule  of  Andros  as  "  an 
involuntary  submission    to   an   arbitrary  power,"  they  an- 
nounced that,  by  the  consent  of  the  major  part  of  the  free- 
men, they  had  themselves  resumed  the  government. 

In  obtaining  the  approval  of  the  king.  Whiting,  the  1690. 
agent  of  Connecticut,  was  aided  by  all  the  influence 
which  the  religious  sympathy  of  the  Presbyterians  could 
enlist  for  New  England.  The  English  corporations  had 
been  restored ;  and  Edward  Ward  gave  his  opinion  that  a 
surrender,  of  which  no  legal  record  existed,  did  not  invali- 
date a  patent.  Somers  assented.  "  There  is  no  ground  of 
doubt,"  reiterated  Sir  George  Treby.  And  the  sanctity  at- 
tached to  the  democratic  charter  and  government  of  Con- 
necticut is  an  honorable  proof  of  the  respect  which  was 

VOL.  II.  16 


242  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX. 

cherished  by  the  Revolution  of  1688  for  every  existing  fran- 
chise. So  the  rule  of  the  people  was  restored ;  they  elected 
their  own  governor,  council,  assembly  men,  and  all  their 
magistrates,  and  all  annually.  Connecticut  rested  on  free 
labor,  and  upheld  equality :  the  people  were  the  sources  of 
all  power. 

The  English  crown  would  willingly  have  resumed,  at 
least,  the  command  of  the  militia,  which,  after  having  been, 
at  one  time,  assigned  to  the  governor  of  Massachusetts,  by 

whom  it  was  never  challenged,  was  claimed  as  a  part 
1692.       of  the  royal  prerogative,  and  in  1692  conferred  on 

the  governor  of  New  York.  The  legislature  resisted, 
and  referred  the  question  to  the  consideration  of  its  con- 
stituents, a  community  chiefly  of  freeholders,  the  unmixed 

progeny  of  English  Puritans.  Their  opinion  favored 
Se^t.       ^  petition  to  the  king,  by  the  hands  of  Fitz-John 

Winthrop.  To  give  the  command  of  the  militia,  it 
was  said,  to  the  governor  of  another  colony,  is,  in  effect, 
to  put  our  persons,  interests,  and  liberties  entirely  into  his 
power :  by  our  charter,  the  governor  and  company  them- 
selves have  a  commission  of  command. 

Meantime,  Fletcher,  refusing  to  await  the  decision 

from  England,  repaired  to  Hartford  with  a  small 
retinue,  to  assume  the  authority  over  the  militia,  conferred 
on  him  by  his  instructions.  He  found  the  general  court  in 
session,  went  up  to  them,  caused  his  commission  to  be  read, 
gave  the  governor  a  memorial  requiring  obedience  to  the 
king's  command,  and  so  left  them  to  debate.  At  the  end 
of  two  days,  they  sent  him  a  paper,  insisting  on  their 
charter,  and  refusing  obedience.  After  a  conference  with 
some  of  them,  he  quickly  discovered  that  they  were  resolved 
and  positive.  To  the  secretary  of  state  he  reported  that 
he  had  gone  so  far  as  he  could  without  resorting  to  force, 
saying  further :  "  I  never  saw  magistracy  so  prostituted  as 
here ;  the  laws  of  England  have  no  force  in  this  colony ; 

they  set  up  for  a  free  state."  Six  months  later,  the 
Aprfig.  ^i^S'  ^^  council,  decided,  on  the  advice  of  Ward  and 

Treves,  that  the  ordinary  power  of  the  militia  in 
Connecticut  and  in  Rhode  Island  belonged  to  their  respec- 


1694.        NEW  ENGLAND  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.        243 

live  governments  ;  and  Winthrop,  returning  from  his  agency 
to  a  joyful  welcome,  was  soon  elected  governor  of  the 
colony. 

The  decisions  which  established  the  rights  of  Connecticut 
included  those  of  Rhode  Island.  The  assaults  of  the 
royalists  were  always  made  upon  the  more  powerful  colony, 
in  the  assurance  that  the  fate  of  both  would  be  included  in 
its  overthrow.  These  two  commonwealths  were  the  portion 
of  the  British  empire  distinguished  above  all  others  by  the 
largest  liberty.  Each  presented  the  anomaly  of  a  nearly 
absolute  democracy  under  the  shelter  of  a  monarchy.  But 
the  results  in  the  two  were  not  strictly  parallel.  Rhode 
Island  had  asserted  entire  freedom  of  mind ;  it  had  there- 
fore, apparently,  less  unity  in  its  population  and  less  co- 
hesion. In  consequence,  it  was  inferior  in  all  that  required 
joint  action,  but  had  a  greater  regard  for  personal  liberty 
and  independence.  No  bitter  conflict  with  the  crown  had 
excited  any  deep  hostilities ;  and  the  colony  yielded  for 
a  season  to  quiet  influence  what  it  might  have  refused  to 
force  or  entreaty.  It  interpolated  into  the  statute-book  the 
exclusion  of  papists  from  the  established  equality.  As  all 
freemen  had  a  joint  interest  in  the  large  commons  of  land 
in  the  several  townships,  the  right  of  admitting  freemen, 
who  would  thus  become  sharers  in  the  reserved  lands,  was 
transferred  to  the  towns. 

In  Connecticut,  no  other  influence  gave  a  bias,  except 
that  of  the  Puritan  clergy,  who  were  there,  and  there  only, 
consociated  by  the  legislature ;  and  it  was  first  the  custom, 
and  afterwards  the  order,  that  "  the  ministers  of  the  gospel 
should  preach  a  sermon  on  the  day  appointed  by  law  for  the 
choice  of  civil  rulers,  proper  for  the  direction  of  the  towns 
in  the  work  before  them." 

But  danger  was  not  passed.  The  crown,  reserving  to 
itself  the  right  of  appeal,  had  still  a  method  of  interfering 
in  the  internal  concerns  of  the  little  republics.  Besides, 
their  charters  were  never  safe ;  absolute  sovereignty  being 
claimed  in  England,  their  freedom  rested  on  forbearance. 
Both  were  included  among  the  colonies  in  which  the  lords 
of  trade  advised  a  complete  restoration  of  the  prerogatives 


244  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX. 

of  the  crown.  Both  were  named  in  the  bill  which, 
Aprhi.  ^^  1701,  was  introduced  into  parliament  for  the  abro- 
gation of  all  American  charters.  The  journals  of  the 
Mays,  house  of  lords  relate  that  Connecticut  was  publicly 
heard  against  the  measure,  contending  that  its  liber- 
ties were  held  by  contract,  in  return  for  services  that  had 
been  performed  ;  that  the  taking  away  of  so  many  charters 
would  destroy  all  confidence  in  royal  promises,  and  would 
afford  a  precedent  dangerous  to  all  the  chartered  corpora^ 
tions  of  England.  Yet  the  bill  was  read  a  second  time,  and 
its  principle,  as  applied  to  colonies,  was  advocated  by  the 
mercantile  interest  and  by  "great  men"  in  England.  The 
impending  war  with  the  French  postponed  the  purpose  till 
the  accession  of  the  house  of  Hanover. 

But  the  object  was  not  left  out  of  mind.  Lord 
June.  Cornbury,  who  had  in  vain  solicited  money  of  Con- 
necticut, wrote  home  that  "  this  vast  continent  would 
never  be  useful  to  England,  till  all  the  proprietary  and 
charter  governments  were  brought  under  the  crown."  An 
officer  of  the  English  government  sought  to  rouse  mercan- 
tile avarice  against  the  people  of  Connecticut  by  reporting 
that,  "  if  the  government  be  continued  longer  in  these  men's 
hands,  the  honest  trade  of  these  parts  will  be  ruined."  And 
Dudley,  a  native  New  England  man,  after  he  became  gov- 
ernor of  Massachusetts,  took  the  lead  in  the  conspiracy 
against  the  liberties  of  New  England,  preparing  a  volume 
of  complaints,  and  urging  the  appointment  of  a  gov- 
1705.  ernor  over  Connecticut  by  the  royal  prerogative. 
The  lords  of  trade  were  too  just  to  condemn  the 
colony  unheard,  and  it  succeeded  in  its  vindication ;  only 
an  obsolete  law  against  Quakers,  which  had  never  been 
enforced,  after  furnishing  an  excuse  for  outcries  against 
Puritan  intolerance,  was  declared  null  and  void  by  the 
queen  in  council. 

The  insurrection  in  Boston,  which  had  overthrown  the 
dominion  of  Andros,  had  sprung  spontaneously  from  the 
people.  Among  the  magistrates,  and  especially  among 
the  ministers,  some  distrusted  every  popular  movement, 
and   sought  to  control  a  revolution  of  which  they  feared 


1689.        NEW  ENGLAND  AFTER   THE  REVOLUTION.        245 

the  tendency.  The  insurgents  insisted  on  the  restoration 
of  the  charter ;  but  Cotton  Mather,  claiming  only  English 
liberties,  and  not  charter  liberties,  and  selfishly  jealous  of 
popular  power,  was  eager  to  thwart  the  design-,  and, 
against  the  opinion  of  the  venerable  Bradstreet,  the  Apr?20. 
charter  magistrates,  joining  to  themselves  "  the  prin- 
cipal inhabitants "  of  Boston,  became  a  self-constituted 
*'  council  for  the  safety  of  the  people."  Thus  was  the  pop- 
ular will  defeated.  The  colony  had  demanded  its  ancient 
liberties ;  the  men  on  whom  it  was  compelled  to  rely,  as- 
suming to  be  its  guardians,  "  humbly  "  waited  "  for  direc- 
tion of  the  crown  of  England,"  and  lost  the  only  oppor- 
tunity to  vindicate  its  sequestered  freedom.  "  Had  they, 
at  that  time,"  —  it  is  the  confession  of  Increase  Mather,  — 
"  entered  upon  the  full  exercise  of  their  charter  govern- 
ment, as  their  undoubted  right,  wise  men  in  England  were 
of  opinion  they  might  have  gone  on  without  disturbance." 

When  the   convention  of    the  people    assembled, 
they,  too,  were  jealous  of  their  ancient  privileges.    May  9. 
Instead  of    recognising  the  self-constituted  council, 
they  excluded  the  new  associates,  and  declared  the  gover- 
nor, deputy  governor,  and  assistants,  chosen  and  sworn  in 
1686,  according  to  charter  rights,  and  the  deputies  sent  by 
the  freemen  of  the  towns,  to  be  the  government  now 
settled  in  the  colony.     The  council  resisted  ;  and  the  May  22. 
question  was  referred  to  the   people.      Nearly  four 
fifths  of  the  towns  instructed  their  representatives  to  reas- 
sume  ;  but  the  pertinacity  of  a  majority  of  the  council 
permitted  only  a  compromise.     In  June,  the  repre-   June  5. 
sentatives,  upon  a  new  choice,  assembled  in  Boston. 
Again  they  refused  to  act,  till  the  old  charter  ofiicers  should 
assume  their  power  as  of  right.     The  council  accepted  the 
condition,  but  still  as  subject  to  directions  from  England. 
Indeed,   the   time  had   gone   by.     Already  an   address   to 
King  William  had  contained  the  assurance  that  "  they  had 
not  entered  upon  the  full  exercise  of  the  charter  govern- 
ment," and  was  soon  answered  by  the  royal  assent  to  the 
temporary  organization   which    the   council   had   adopted. 
But  the  popular  party,  jealous  of  the  dispositions  of  Increase 


246  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX. 

Mather,  joined  with  him,  in  the  agency  for  New  England, 
Sir  Henry  Ashurst  and  two  of  their  own  adherents,  the 
patriot  Elisha  Cooke,  and  the  honest  but  less  able  Thomas 
Oakes. 

A  revolution  in  opinion  was  impending.  The  Reforma- 
tion, to  overthrow  accumulated  superstitions,  went  back  of 
them  all  and  sought  the  criterion  of  truth  in  the  Bible ; 
and  a  slavish  interpretation  of  the  Bible  had  led  to  a  blind 
idolatry  of  the  book.  But  true  religion  has  no  alliance 
with  bondage  ;  and,  as  the  spirit  of  the  Reformation,  which 
was  but  a  less  perfect  form  of  freedom  of  mind,  was 
advancing,  reason  was  summoned  to  interpret  the  records 
of  the  past,  and  to  separate  time-hallowed  errors  from 
truths  of  the  deepest  moment.  The  statute-book,  in  obedi- 
ence to  this  adoration  of  the  letter,  had  asserted  the  exist- 
ence of  wit^chcraft  by  establishing  death  as  its  penalty; 
sustaining  both  the  superstition  and  its  punishment  by 
reference  to  the  Jewish  records. 

New  England,  like  Canaan,  had  been  settled  by  fugitives. 
Like  the  Jews,  they  had  fled  to  a  wilderness ;  like 
1688.  the  Jews,  they  looked  to  heaven  for  a  light  to  lead 
them  on ;  like  the  Jews,  they  had  no  supreme  ruler 
but  God ;  like  the  Jews,  they  had  heathen  for  their  foes ; 
and  they  derived  their  legislation  from  the  Jewish  code. 
But,  for  the  people  of  New  England,  the  days  of  Moses 
and  of  Joshua  were  past ;  for  them  there  was  no  longer  a 
promised  land,  —  they  were  in  possession.  Reason  now 
insisted  on  bringing  the  adopted  laws  to  the  proof,  that 
it  might  hold  fast  only  the  good.  Skepticism  began  to 
appear;  not  the  giant  skepticism  which,  in  Europe,  was 
beginning  to  overthrow  the  accumulated  abuses  of  centuries, 
but  a  cautious  doubt,  which  should  eliminate  the  errors 
adhering  to  the  glorious  faith  by  which  New  England  had 
been  created.  The  fear  of  sorcery  and  the  evil  power  of 
the  invisible  world  had  sprung  alike  from  the  letter  of  the 
Mosaic  law  and  from  the  wonder  excited  by  the  mysteries 
of  nature.  Man  feels  that  he  is  a  dependent  being.  The 
reverence  for  universal  laws  is  implanted  in  his  nature  too 
deeply  to   be  removed.     The  infinite  is  everywhere ;   and 


1688.        NEW  ENGLAND  AETER  THE  REVOLUTION.        247 

everywhere  man  has  acknowledged  it,  beholding  in  every 
power  the  result  of  an  infinite  attribute.  The  same  truth 
superstition  admits,  yet  disguises,  when  it  fills  the  air  with 
spectres ;  or  startles  ghosts  among  the  tombs  ;  or  studies  the 
stars  to  cast  a  horoscope ;  or  gazes  on  the  new  moon  with 
confiding  credulity ;  or,  yielding  blindly  to  fear,  beholds  in 
the  evil  that  is  in  the  world  the  present  malignity  of  Satan. 
The  belief  in  witchcraft  had  fastened  itself  on  the  elements 
of  faith,  and  become  deeply  branded  into  the  common 
mind.  Do  not  despise  the  credulity.  The  people  did  not 
rally  to  the  error;  they  accepted  the  superstition  only 
because  it  had  not  yet  been  disengaged  from  religion. 

The  same  causes  which  had  given  energy  to  the  religious 
principle  had  given  weight  to  the  ministers.  In  the  settle- 
ment of  New  England,  the  temple,  or,  as  it  was  called,  the 
meeting-house,  w^as  the  centre  round  which  the  people  gath- 
ered. As  the  church  had  successfully  assumed  the  exclusive 
possession  of  civil  franchises,  the  ambition  of  the  ministers 
had  been  both  excited  and  gratified.  They  were  not  only 
the  counsellors  by  an  unwritten  law ;  they  were  the  authors 
of  state  papers,  often  employed  on  embassies,  and,  at  home, 
speakers  at  elections  and  in  town-meetings.  "New  Eng- 
land," says  Cotton  Mather,  "being  a  country  whose  interests 
are  remarkably  inwrapped  in  ecclesiastical  circumstances, 
ministers  ought  to  concern  themselves  in  politics."  But 
their  political  mission  was  accomplished.  Under  their  guid- 
ance, God's  people  had  entered  into  possession  of  the  prom- 
ised land,  and  had  planted  commonwealths  free  from  the 
presence  of  royalty,  of  feudalism,  and  of  prelacy.  The 
power  of  the  ministers  over  the  magistrates,  having  now  no 
effect  but  to  narrow  and  restrain,  reposed  no  longer  on  the 
energy  of  religion,  but  on  a  superstitious  veneration.  It 
is  the  beauty  of  truth  that  nothing  can  rest  upon  it  but 
justice.  The  ministers,  desirous  of  unjust  influence,  could 
build  their  hope  of  it  only  on  error ;  and  the  struggle  for 
greater  freedom  of  mind  —  the  struggle  against  superstition, 
and  against  the  slavish  interpretation  of  the  Bible  —  was 
one  with  the  struggle  against  their  dominion  in  the  state. 

In  the  last  year  of  the  administration  of  Andros,  who, 


248 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX. 


as  the  servant  of  arbitrary  power,  had  no  motive  to  dispel 
superstition,  the  daughter  of  John  Goodwin,  a  child  of  thir- 
teen years,  charged  a  laundress  with  having  stolen  linen 
from  the  family ;  Glover,  the  mother  of  the  laundress,  a 
friendless  emigrant,  almost  ignorant  of  English,  like  a  true 
woman  with  a  mother's  heart,  rebuked  the  false  accusation. 
Immediately  the  girl,  to  secure  revenge,  became  bewitched. 
The  infection  spread.  Three  others  of  the  family,  the  young- 
est a  boy  of  less  than  five  years  old,  soon  succeeded  in  equally 
arresting  public  attention.  They  would  affect  to  be  deaf, 
then  dumb,  then  blind,  or  all  three  at  once ;  they  would 
bark  like  dogs,  or  purr  like  so  many  cats ;  but  they  ate  well 
and  slept  well.  Cotton  Mather  went  to  prayer  by  the  side 
of  one  of  them,  and,  lo  !  the  child  lost  her  hearing  till  prayer 
was  over.  What  was  to  be  done  ?  The  four  ministers  of 
Boston,  and  the  one  of  Charlestown,  assembled  in  Good- 
win's house,  and  spent  a  whole  day  of  fasting  in  prayer.  In 
consequence,  the  youngest  child,  the  little  one  of  four  years 
old,  was  "  delivered."  But  if  the  ministers  could  thus  by 
prayer  deliver  a  possessed  child,  then  there  must  have  been 
a  witch ;  the  honor  of  the  ministers  required  a  prosecution 
of  the  affair ;  and  the  magistrates,  William  Stoughton  being 
one  of  the  judges,  and  all  holding  commissions  exclusively 
from  the  English  king,  and  being  irresponsible  to  the  people 
of  Massachusetts,  with  a  "  vigor"  which  the  united  ministers 
commended  as  "just,"  made  "a  discovery  of  the  wicked 
instrument  of  the  devil."  The  culprit  was  evidently  a  wild 
Irish  woman,  of  a  strange  tongue.  Goodwin,  who  made 
the  complaint,  "  had  no  proof  that  could  have  done  her  any 
hurt ;  "  but  "  the  scandalous  old  hag,"  whom  some,  thought 
"crazed  in  her  intellectuals,"  was  bewildered,  and  made 
strange  answers,  which  were  taken  as  confessions  ;  some- 
times, in  excitement,  using  her  native  dialect.  One  Hughes 
testified  that,  six  years  before,  she  had  heard  one  Howen 
say  she  had  seen  Glover  come  down  her  chimney.  It  was 
plain  the  prisoner  was  a  Roman  Catholic;  she  had  never 
learned  the  Lord's  prayer  in  English ;  she  could  repeat  the 
paternoster  fluently  enough,  but  not  quite  correctly :  so  the 
ministers  and  Goodwin's  family  had  the  satisfaction  of  get- 


1689.   NEW  ENGLAND  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.   249 

ting  her  condemned  as  a  witch,  and  executed.  "  Here," 
it  was  proclaimed,  "was  food  for  faith."  So  desperately 
wicked  is  the  heart  of  man  :  the  girl,  who  knew  herself  to 
be  a  deceiver,  had  no  remorse  ;  and  to  the  ministers,  in  their 
self-righteousness,  it  never  occurred  that  vanity  and  love  of 
power  had  blinded  their  judgment. 

There  were  skeptics  in  Boston.  The  age,  thought  the 
ministers,  "  was  a  debauched  one,"  given  up  "  to  Saddu- 
cism  ;  "  and,  as  the  possessed  damsel  obtained  no  relief. 
Cotton  Mather,  eager  to  learn  the  marvels  of  the  world 
of  spirits,  and  "  wishing  to  confute  the  Sadducism  "  of  his 
times,  invited  her  to  his  house ;  and  the  artful  girl  easily 
imposed  upon  his  credulity.  The  devil  would  permit  her 
to  read  in  Quaker  books,  or  the  Common  Prayer,  or  popish 
books ;  but  a  prayer  from  Cotton  Mather,  or  a  chapter  from 
the  Bible,  would  throw  her  into  convulsions.  By  a  series  of 
experiments,  in  reading  aloud  passages  from  the  Bible,  in 
various  languages,  the  minister  satisfied  himself,  "  by  trials 
of  their  capacity,"  that  devils  are  well  skilled  in  languages, 
and  understand  Latin  and  Greek  and  even  Hebrew ;  though 
he  fell  "  upon  one  inferior  Indian  language  which  the  dae- 
mons did  not  seem  so  well  to  understand."  Experiments 
were  made,  with  unequal  success,  to  see  if  devils  can  know 
the  thoughts  of  others;  and  the  inference  was  that  "all 
devils  are  not  alike  sagacious."  The  vanity  of  Cotton 
Mather  was  further  gratified  ;  for  the  bewitched  girl  would 
say  that  the  demons  could  not  enter  his  study,  and  that  his 
own  person  was  shielded  by  God  against  blows  from  the 
evil  spirits. 

The  revolution  in  New  England  seemed  to  open,  i689. 
once  more,  a  career  to  the  ambition  of  ministers.  Yet 
great  obstacles  existed.  The  rapid  progress  of  free  inquiry 
was  alarming.  "  There  are  multitudes  of  Sadducees  in  our 
day,"  sighed  Cotton  Mather.  "  A  devil,  in  the  apprehen- 
sion of  these  mighty  acute  philosophers,  is  no  more  than  a 
quality  or  a  distemper."  "  We  shall  come,"  he  adds,  "  to 
have  no  Christ  but  a  light  within,  and  no  heaven  but  a  frame 
of  mind."  "  Men  counted  it  wisdom  to  credit  nothing  but 
what  they  see  and  feel.      They  never  saw   any  witches; 


250  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX. 

therefore,  there  are  none."  "  How  much,"  add  the  minis- 
ters of  Boston  and  Charlestown,  "how  much  this  fond 
opinion  has  gotten  ground  is  awfully  observable."  "  Witch- 
craft," shouted  Cotton  Mather  from  the  pulpit,  "  is  the  most 
nefandous  high  treason  against  the  Majesty  on  high  ; "  "a 
capital  crime."  "  A  witch  is  not  to  be  endured  in  heaven 
or  on  earth."  And,  because  men  were  skeptical  on  the 
subject,  "  God  is  pleased,"  said  the  ministers,  "  to  suffer 
devils  to  do  such  things  in  the  world  as  shall  stop  the 
mouths  of  gainsayers,  and  extort  a  confession."  The  Dis- 
course of  Cotton  Mather  was  therefore  printed,  with  a 
copious  narrative  of  the  recent  case  of  witchcraft.  The 
story  was  confirmed  by  Goodwin,  and  recommended  by  all 
the  ministers  of  Boston  and  Charlestown  as  an  answer  to 
atheism,  proving  clearly  that  "  there  is  both  a  God  and  a 
devil,  and  witchcraft ; "  and  Cotton  Mather,  announcing  him- 
self as  an  eye-witness,  resolved  henceforward  to  regard  "  the 
denial  of  devils,  or  of  witches,"  as  a  personal  affront,  the 
evidence  "  of  ignorance,  incivility,  and  dishonest  impudence." 

This  book,  thus  prepared  and  recommended,  was  printed 
in  1689,  and  widely  distributed.  Unhappily,  it  gained  fresh 
power  from  England,  where  it  was  "  published  by  Richard 
Baxter,"  who  declared  the  evidence  strong  enough  to  con- 
vince all  but  "  a  very  obdurate  Sadducee." 

This  tale  went  abroad  at  a  moment  when  the  enthusiasm 
of  the  country  was  engrossed  by  the  hopes  that  sprung  from 
the  accession  of  King  William.  The  conquest  of  New  France 
was  the  burning  passion  of  New  England,  in  harmony  with 
its  hatred  of  legitimacy  and  the  old  forms  of  Christianity. 
To  subdue  the  French  dominions,  this  was  the  joint  object 
which  was  to  foster  a  common  feelincf  between  Eno^land 
and  the  American  colonies.  This  passion  advanced  even  to 
action,  but,  at  that  time,  was  only  fruitful  of  disasters. 

Meanwhile,  the  agents  of  Massachusetts,  appealing  to  the 

common  enmity  towards  France,  solicited  a  restoration  of 

its  charter.     King  William  was  a  friend  to  Calvin- 

Mar^  u.  ^^*^'  ^^^'  <^^  *^^  fi^'^t  interview  with  Increase  Mather, 

conceded   the  recall  of   Sir  Edmund  Andros.     The 

convention   parliament  voted  that  the  taking  away  of  the 


1689.        NEW  ENGLAND  AFTER  THE   REVOLUTION.        251 

New  England  charters  was  a  grievance  ;  and  the  English 
Presbyterians,  with  singular  affection,  declared  that  "  the 
king  could  not  possibly  do  any  thing  more  grateful  to  his 
dissenting  subjects  in  England  than  by  restoring  to  New 
England  its  former  privileges."  The  dissolution  of  the  con- 
vention parliament,  followed  by  one  in  which  an  influence 
friendly  to  the  tories  was  perceptible,  destroyed  the  hope  of 
relief  from  the  English  legislature :  to  attempt  a  reversal  of 
the  judgment  by  a  writ  of  error  was  hopeless.  There  was 
no  avenue  to  success  but  through  the  favor  of  a  monarch 
who  loved  authority.  The  people  of  New  England  "are 
like  the  Jews  under  Cyrus,"  said  Wiswall,  the  agent  for 
Plymouth  colony :  with  a  new  monarch  "  on  the  throne  of 
their  oppressors,  they  hope  in  vain  to  rebuild  their  city  and 
their  sanctuary." 

Yet  William  III.  professed  friendship  for  Massa-  iggg. 
chusetts.  His  subjects  in  New  England,  said  In-  J"iy*- 
crease  Mather,  if  they  could  but  enjoy  "their  ancient  rights 
and  privileges,"  would  make  him  "the  emperor  of  Amer- 
ica." In  the  family  of  Hampden,  Massachusetts  inherited 
a  powerful  intercessor.  The  Coimtess  of  Sunderland,  whom 
the  Princess,  afterwards  Queen,  Anne  describes  as  "  a  hypo- 
crite," "  running  from  church  to  church  after  the  famousest 
preachers,  and  keeping  a  clatter  with  her  devotions,"  is 
remembered  in  America  as  a  benefactress.  The  aged  Lord 
Wharton,  last  surviving  member  of  the  Westminster  assem- 
bly of  divines,  "  a  constant  and  cordial  lover  of  all  good 
men,"  never  grew  weary  in  his  zeal.  I  take  pleasure  in 
recording  that  the  tolerant  archbishop  of  Canterbury,  the 
rational  Tillotson,  charged  the  king  "  not  to  take  away 
from  the  people  of  New  England  any  of  the  privileges 
which  Charles  I.  had  granted  them."  "  The  charter,"  said 
the  feebler  Burnet,  "  was  not  an  act  of  grace,  but  a  contract 
between  the  king  and  the  first  patentees,  who  promised  to 
enlarge  the  king's  dominion  at  their  own  charges,  pro- 
vided they  and  their  posterity  might  enjoy  certain  privi- 
leges." Yet  Somers  resisted  its  restoration,  pleading  its 
imperfections.  The  charter  sketched  by  Sir  George  Treby 
was  rejected  by  the  privy  council  for  its  liberality ;  and  that 


252  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX. 

which  was  finally  conceded  reserved  such  powers  to  the 
crown  that  Elisha  Cooke,  the  popular  envoy,  declined  to 
accept  it.  But  Increase  Mather,  an  earlier  agent  for  the 
colony,  announced  it  as  conferring  on  the  general  court, 
"  with  the  king's  approbation,  as  much  power  in  New  Eng- 
land as  the  king  and  parliament  have  in  England.  The 
people,"  he  added,  "  have  all  English  liberties,  can  be 
touched  by  no  law  but  of  their  own  making,  nor  can  be 
taxed  by  any  authority  but  themselves." 

The  freemen  of  Massachusetts,  under  the  old  charter,  had 
elected  their  governor  annually ;  that  officer,  the  lieutenant- 
governor,  and  the  secretary  w^ere  henceforward  appointed 
by  the  king  during  the  royal  pleasure.  The  governor  had 
been  but  first  among  the  magistrates  ;  he  was  now  the  repre- 
sentative of  English  royalty,  and  could  convene,  adjourn,  or 
dissolve  the  general  court.  The  freemen  had,  by  popular 
vote,  annually  elected  their  magistrates  or  judicial  officers ; 
the  judges  were  now  appointed,  with  consent  of  council,  by 
the  royal  governor.  The  decisions  in  the  courts  of  New 
England  had  been  final ;  appeals  to  the  privy  council  were 
now  admitted.  The  freemen  had  exercised  the  full  power 
of  legislation  within  themselves  by  their  deputies ;  the 
warrior  king  reserved  a  double  veto,  —  an  immediate  nega- 
tive to  the  governor  of  the  colony,  while,  at  any  time  within 
three  years,  the  king  might  cancel  any  act  of  colonial  legis- 
lation. In  one  respect,  the  new  charter  was  an  advance- 
ment. Every  form  of  Christianity,  except,  unhappily,  the 
Koman  Catholic,  was  enfranchised ;  and,  in  civil  affairs,  the 
freedom  of  the  colony,  no  longer  restricted  to  the  members 
of  the  church,  was  extended  so  widely  as  to  be,  in  a  prac- 
tical sense,  nearly  universal.  The  legislature  continued  to 
encourage  by  law  the  religion  professed  by  the  majority  of 
the  inhabitants,  but  it  no  longer  decided  controversies  on 
opinions;  and  no  synod  was  ever  again  convened.  The 
charter  government  of  Massachusetts,  as  established  by  the 
revolutionary  monarch  of  England,  differed  from  that  of 
the  royal  provinces  in  nothing  but  the  council.  In  the 
royal  colonies,  that  body  w^as  appointed  by  the  king;  in 
Massachusetts,  it  was,  in  the  first  instance,  appointed  by 


1690.        NEW  ENGLAND  AFTER  THE   REVOLUTION.        253 

the  king,  and,  subject  to  a  negative  from  the  governor,  was 
ever  after  elected,  in  joint  ballot,  by  the  members  of  the 
council  and  the  representatives  of  the  people.  As  the  coun- 
cillors were  twenty-eight  in  number,  they  generally,  by 
their  own  vote,  succeeded  in  effecting  their  own  re-election ; 
and,  instead  of  being,  as  elsewhere,  a  greedy  oligarchy,  were 
famed  for  their  unoffending  respectability. 

The  territory  of  Massachusetts  was  by  the  charter  vastly 
enlarged.  On  the  south,  it  embraced  Plymouth  colony  and 
the  Elizabeth  Islands ;  on  the  east,  Maine  and  all  beyond 
it  to  the  Atlantic ;  on  the  north,  it  was  described  as  swept 
by  the  St.  Lawrence,  —  the  fatal  gift  of  a  wilderness,  for  the 
conquest  and  defence  of  which  Massachusetts  expended 
more  treasure,  and  lost  more  of  her  sons,  than  all  the  Eng- 
lish continental  colonies  beside. 

Fi-om  the  Elizabeth  Islands  to  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  east- 
ward to  the  Atlantic,  Massachusetts  now  included  the  whole 
region,  except  New  Hampshire.  That  colony  became  hence- 
forward a  royal  province.  Its  inhabitants  had  assem- 
bled in  convention  to  institute  government  for  them-  2; 
selves ;  at  their  second  session,  they  resolved  to  unite, 
and  did  actually  unite,  with  Massachusetts  ;  and  both  colo- 
nies desired  that  the  union  might  be  permanent.  But  Eng- 
land, if  it  annexed  to  Massachusetts  the  burden  of  the 
unconquered  desert  east  and  north  of  the  Piscataqua,  held 
itself  bound  by  no  previous  compact  to  concede  to  New 
Hampshire  any  charter  whatever.  The  right  to  the  soil, 
which  Samuel  Allen,  of  London,  had  purchased  of  Mason, 
was  recognised  as  valid ;  and  Allen  himself  received  the 
royal  commission  to  govern  a  people  whose  territory,  in- 
cluding the  farms  they  had  redeemed  from  the  wilderness, 
he  claimed  as  his  own.  His  son-in-law  Usher,  of  Boston, 
formerly  an  adherent  of  Andros,  and  a  great  speculator  in 
lands,  was  appointed,  under  him,  lieutenant-governor.  The 
English  Revolution  of  1688  valued  the  uncertain  claims  of 
an  English  merchant  more  than  the  liberties  of  a  province. 
Indeed,  that  revolution  loved  not  liberty,  but  privilege,  and 
respected  popular  liberty  only  where  it  had  the  sanction  of 
a  vested  right. 


254  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX, 

1592.  In  1692,  the  new  government  for  New  Hampshire 
Aug.  13.  -^as  organized  by  Usher.  The  civil  history  of  that 
colony,  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,'  is  a  series  of  lawsuits 
about  land.  Complaints  against  Usher  were  met  by  counter 
complaints,  till  New  Hampshire  was  placed,  with 
1699.  Massachusetts,  under  the  government  of  Bellomont ; 
and  a  judiciary,  composed  of  men  attached  to  the 
colony,  was  instituted.  Then,  and  for  years  afterwards, 
followed  scenes  of  confusion :  trials  in  the  colonial  courts, 
resulting  always  in  verdicts  against  the  pretended  proprie- 
tary ;  appeals  to  the  English  monarch  in  council ;  papers 
withheld ;  records  of  the  court  under  Cranfield  destroyed ; 
orders  from  the  lords  of  trade  and  the  crown  disregarded 
by  a  succession  of  inflexible  juries ;  a  compromise  proposed, 
and  rendered  of  no  avail  by  the  death  of  one  of  the  parties ; 
an  Indian  deed  manufactured  to  protect  the  cultivators  of 
the  soil;  till,  at  last,  the  heirs  of  the  proprietary 
1715.  abandoned  their  claim  in  despair.  The  yeomanry  of 
New  Hampshire  gained  quiet  possession  of  the  land 
which  their  labor  had  rendered  valuable.  The  waste  do- 
main reverted  to  the  crown.  A  proprietary,  sustained  by 
the  crown,  claimed  the  people  of  New  Hampshire  as  his 
tenants;    and  they  made  themselves  freeholders. 

For  Massachusetts,  the  nomination  of  its  first  offi- 
cers under  the  charter  was  committed  to  Increase 
Mather.  As  governor  he  proposed  Sir  William  Phips,  a 
native  of  New  England,  who  honestly  loved  his  country,  of 
a  dull  intellect,  headstrong,  and  with  a  reason  so  feeble  that 
in  politics  he  knew  nothing  of  general  principles,  in  religion 
was  a  victim  to  superstition.  Accustomed,  from  boyhood, 
to  the  axe  and  the  oar,  he  had  gained  distinction  only  by 
his  wealth,  the  fruits  of  his  enterprise  with  the  diving-bell 
in  raising  treasures  from  a  Spanish  wreck.  His  partners 
in  this  enterprise  gained  him  the  honor  of  knighthood  ;  his 
present  favor  was  due  to  the  honest  bigotry  and  ignorance 
which  left  him  open  to  the  influence  of  the  ministers. 
Intercession  had  been  made  by  Cotton  Mather  for  the 
advancement  of  William  Stoughton,  a  man  of  cold  affec- 
tions, proud,  self-willed,  and  covetous  of  distinction.     He 


1692.        NEW  ENGLAND  AFTER  THE   REVOLUTION.        255 

had  acted  under  James  II.  as  deputy  president ;  a  fit  tool 
for  sucli  a  king,  joining  in  all  "  the  miscarriages  of  the  late 
government."  The  people  had  rejected  him,  in  their  elec- 
tion of  judges,  giving  him  not  a  vote.  Yielding  to  the 
request  of  his  son,  Increase  Mather  assigned  to  Stoughton 
the  office  of  deputy  governor.  "  The  twenty-eight  assist- 
ants, who  are  the  governor's  council,  every  man  of  them," 
wrote  the  agent,  "  is  a  friend  to  the  interests  of  the 
churches."  "  The  time  for  favor  is  come,"  exulted  Cotton 
Mather ;  "  yea,  the  set  time  is  come.  Instead  of  my  being 
made  a  sacrifice  to  wicked  rulers,  my  father-in-law,  with 
several  related  to  me,  and  several  brethren  of  my  own 
church,  are  among  the  council.  The  governor  of  the  prov- 
ince is  not  my  enemy,  but  one  whom  I  baptized,  and  one  of 
my  own  flock,  and  one  of  my  dearest  friends."  And,  utter- 
ing a  midnight  cry,  he  wrestled  with  God  to  awaken  the 
churches  to  some  remarkable  thing.  A  religious  excite- 
ment was  resolved  on.  "  I  obtained  of  the  Lord  that  he 
would  use  me,"  says  the  infatuated  man,  "  to  be  a- herald  of 
his  kingdom  now  approaching  ;  "  and,  in  the  gloom 
of  winter,  among  a  people  desponding  at  the  loss  of  1692. 
their  old  liberties,  their  ill  success  against  Quebec, 
the  ravages  of  their  north-eastern  border  by  a  cruel  and 
well-directed  enemy,  the  ruin  of  their  commerce  by  French 
cruisers,  the  loss  of  credit  by  the  debts  with  which  the  fruit- 
less and  costly  war  overwhelmed  them,  the  wildest  imagi- 
nations might  prevail. 

In  modern  times,  the  cry  of  witchcraft  had  been  raised 
by  the  priesthood  rarely,  I  think  never,  except  when  free 
inquiry  was  advancing.  Many  a  commission  was  empow- 
ered to  punish  alike  heresy  and  witchcraft.  The  bold  in- 
quirer was  sometimes  burnt  as  a  wizard,  and  sometimes 
as  an  insurgent  against  the  established  faith.  In  France, 
where  there  were  most  heretics,  there  were  most  condemna- 
tions for  witchcraft.  Rebellion,  it  was  said,  is  as  the  sin  of 
witchcraft;  and  Cotton  Mather,  in  his  discourse,  did  but 
repeat  the  old  tale  :  "  Rebellion  is  the  Achan,  the  trouble 
of  us  all." 

In  Salem  village,  now  Danvers,  there  had  been  between 


^^^  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX. 

Samuel  Parris,  the  minister,  and  a  part  of  his  people,  a 
strife  so  bitter  that  it  had  even  attracted  the  atten- 
^^^[  tion  of  the  general  court.  The  delusion  of  witch- 
craft would  give  opportunities  of  terrible  vengeance. 
In  the  family  of  Samuel  Parris,  his  daughter,  a  child  of  nine 
years,  and  his  niece,  a  girl  of  less  than  twelve,  began  to  have 
strange  caprices.  "  He  that  will  read  Cotton  Mather's  Book 
of  Memorable  Providences  may  read  part  of  what  these 
children  suffered ; "  and  Tituba,  a  half  Indian,  half  negro 
female  servant,  who  had  practised  some  wild  incantations, 
being  betrayed  by  her  husband,  was  scourged  by  Parris,  her 
master,  into  confessing  herself  a  witch.  The  minis- 
Mar.  11.  ters  of  the  neighborhood  held  at  the  afflicted  house  a 
day  of  fasting  and  prayer ;  and  the  little  children  be- 
came the  most  conspicuous  personages  in  Salem.  Of  a  sud- 
den, the  opportunity  of  fame,  of  which  the  love  is  not  the 
exclusive  infirmity  of  noble  minds,  was  placed  within  the 
reach  of  persons  of  the  coarsest  mould ;  and  the  ambition 
of  notoriety  recruited  the  little  company  of  the  possessed. 
There  existed  no  motive  to  hang  Tituba :  she  was  saved  as 
a  living  witness  to  the  reality  of  witchcraft ;  and  Sarah 
Good,  a  poor  woman  of  a  melancholic  temperament,  was  the 
first  person  selected  for  accusation.  Cotton  Mather,  who 
had  placed  witches  "  among  the  poor  and  vile  and  ragged 
beggars  upon  earth,"  and  had  staked  his  own  reputation  for 
veracity  on  the  reality  of  witchcraft,  prayed  "  for  a  good 
issue."  As  the  affair  proceeded,  and  the  accounts  of  the 
witnesses  appeared  as  if  taken  from  his  own  writings,  his 
boundless  vanity  gloried  in  "  the  assault  of  the  evil  angels 
upon  the  country,  as  a  particular  defiance  unto  himself." 
Yet  the  delusion,  but  for  Parris,  would  have  languished. 
Of  his  own  niece,  the  girl  of  eleven  years  of  age,  he  de- 
manded the  names  of  the  devil's  instruments  who  bewitched 
the  band  of  "the  afflicted,"  and  then  became  at  once  in- 
former and  witness.  In  those  days,  there  was  no  prosecut- 
ing officer ;  and  Parris  was  at  hand  to  question  his  Indian 
servants  and  others,  himself  prompting  their  answers  and 
acting  as  recorder  to  the  magistrates.  The  recollection  of 
the  old  controversy  in  the  parish  could  not  be  forgotten ; 


1692.        NEW  ENGLAND   AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.        257 

and  ParriS,  moved  by  personal  malice  as  well  as  by  blind  zeal, 
"stifled  the  accusations  of  some,"  —  such  is  the  testimony 
of  the  people  of  his  own  village,  —  and,  at  the  same  time 
"  vigilantly  promoting  the  accusation  of  others,"  was  "  the 
beginner  and  procurer  of  the  sore  afflictions  to  Salem 
village  and  the  country."     Martha  Cory,  who  on  her  j^ar^2i. 
examination  in  the  meeting-house  before  a  throng, 
with  a  firm  spirit,  alone,  against  them  all,  denied  the 
presence   of   witchcraft,    was  committed    to   prison.  Mar  24. 
Rebecca  Nurse,  likewise,  a  woman  of  purest  life,  an 
object  of  the  special  hatred  of  Parris,  resisted  the  company 
of  accusers,  and  was  committed.     And  Parris,  filling 
his  prayers  with  the  theme,  made  the  pulpit  ring  with   Aprils. 
it.     "  Have  not  I  chosen  you  twelve,"  —  such  was  his 
text,  — "  and   one    of   you   is    a   devil  ? "     At    this,    Sarah 
Cloyce,  sister  to  Rebecca  Nurse,  rose  up  and  left  the  meet- 
ing-house ;  and  she,  too,  was  cried  out  upon,  and  sent  to 
prison. 

The  subject  grew  interesting ;  and,  to  examine  Sarah 
Cloyce  and  Elizabeth  Procter,  the  deputy  governor 
and  five  other  magistrates  went  to  Salem.  It  was  a  Apr.  11. 
great  day ;  several  ministers  were  present.  Parris 
officiated  ;  and,  by  his  own  record,  it  is  plain  that  he  him- 
self elicited  every  accusation.  His  first  witness,  John,  the 
Indian  servant,  husband  to  Tituba,  \fas  rebuked  by  Sarah 
Cloyce,  as  a  grievous  liar.  Abigail  Williams,  the  niece  to 
Parris,  was  also  at  hand  with  her  tales :  the  prisoner  had 
been  at  the  witches'  sacrament.  Struck  with  horror,  Sarah 
Cloyce  asked  for  water,  and  sank  down  "  in  a  dying  faint- 
ing fit."  "  Her  spirit,"  shouted  the  band  of  the  afflicted, 
"  is  gone  to  prison  to  her  sister  Nurse."  Against  Elizabeth 
Procter,  the  niece  of  Parris  told  stories  yet  more  foolish 
than  false  :  the  prisoner  had  invited  her  to  sign  the  devil's 
book.  "  Dear  child,"  exclaimed  the  accused  in  her  agony, 
"  it  is  not  so.  There  is  another  judgment,  dear  child  ; " 
and  her  accusers,  turning  towards  her  husband,  de- 
clared that  he,  too,  was  a  wizard.  All  three  were  com-  Apr.  is. 
mitted.  Examinations  and  commitments  multiplied.  Api  14. 
Giles  Cory,  a  stubborn  old  man  of  more  than  four- 

VOL.  II.  17 


258  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX. 

score  years,  could  not  escape  the  malice  of  his  minister  and 
his  angry  neighbors,  with  whom  he  had  quarrelled.   Edward 
Bishop,  a  farmer,  cured  the  Indian  servant  of  a  fit  by  flog- 
ging him ;  he  declared,  moreover,  his  belief  that  he  could, 
in  like   manner,    cure  the   whole    company   of    the 
Apn^22.  afflicted,  and,  for  his  skepticism,  found  himself  and 
his  wife  in  prison.    Mary  Easty,  of  Topsfield,  another 
sister  to  Rebecca  ISTurse,  —  a  woman  of  singular  gentleness 
and  force  of  character,  deeply  religious,  yet  uninfected  by 
superstition,  —  was  torn  from  her  children  and  sent 
Apr.  22.  to  jail.     Parris  had  had  a  rival  in  George  Burroughs, 
a  graduate  of  Harvard  College,  who,  having  formerly 
preached   in    Salem   village,  had    had  friends   there 
Mays,    desirous    of   his    settlement.     He,    too,  a  skeptic  in 
witchcraft,  was  accused  and  committed.     Thus  far, 
there  had  been  no  success  in  obtaining  confessions,  though 
earnestly  solicited.     It  had  been   hinted,  also,   that 
May  11.  confessing  was  the  avenue  to  safety.     At  last.  Deliv- 
erance Hobbs  owned  every  thing  that  was  asked  of 
her,  and  was  left  unharmed.     The  gallows  was  to  be  set 
up  not  for  those  who  professed  themselves  witches,  but  for 
those  who  rebuked  the  delusion. 

Simon  Bradstreet,  the  governor  of  the  people's  choice, 
deemed  the  evidence  insufiicient  ground  of  guilt. 
May  14.  On  Saturday,  the  14th  of  May,  the  new  charter  and 
the  royal  governor  arrived  in  Boston.  On  the  next 
May  16.  Monday,  the  charter  was  published ;  and  the  parish- 
ioner of  Cotton  Mather,  with  the  royal  council,  was 
installed  in  office.  The  triumph  of  Cotton  Mather  was 
perfect.  Immediately  a  court  of  oyer  and  terminer  was  in- 
stituted by  ordinance,  and  the  positive,  overbearing  Stough- 
ton  appointed  by  the  governor  and  council  its  chief  judge, 
with  Sewall  and  Wait  Winthrop,  two  feebler  men,  as  his 
associates :  by  the  second  of  June  the  court  was  in  session 
at  Salem,  making  its  first  experiment  on  Bridget  Bishop,  a 
poor  and  friendless  old  woman.  The  fact  of  the  witchcraft 
was  assumed  as  "  notorious : "  to  fix  it  on  the  prisoner, 
Samuel  Parris,  who  had  examined  her  before  her  commit- 
ment, was  the  principal  witness  to  her  power  of  inflicting 


1692.        NEW  ENGLAND  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.        259 

torture ;  he  had  seen  it  exercised.  Deliverance  Hobbs  had 
been  \yhipped  with  iron  rods  by  her  spectre ;  neighbors, 
who  had  quarrelled  with  her,  were  willing  to  lay  their  little 
ills  to  her  charge ;  the  poor  creature  had  a  preternatural 
excrescence  in  her  flesh ;  "  she  gave  a  look  towards  the 
great  and  spacious  meeting-house  of  Salem,"  —  it  is  Cotton 
Mather  who  records  this,  —  "and  immediately  a  daemon, 
invisibly  entering  the  house,  tore  down  a  part  of  it."  She 
was  a  witch  by  the  rules  and  precedents  of  Keeble  and  Sir 
Matthew  Hale,  of  Perkins  and  Bernard,  of  Baxter  and 
Cotton  Mather ;  and,  on  the  10th  of  June,  protesting  her 
innocence,  she  was  hanged.  Of  the  magistrates  at  that 
time,  not  one  held  oflice  by  the  suffrage  of  the  people :  the 
tribunal,  essentially  despotic  in  its  origin,  as  in  its  character, 
had  no  sanction  but  an  extraordinary  and  an  illegal  com- 
mission ;  and  Stoughton,  the  chief  judge,  a  partisan  of 
Andros,  had  been  rejected  by  the  people  of  Massachusetts. 
The  responsibility  of  the  tragedy,  far  from  attaching  to  the 
people  of  the  colony,  rests  with  the  very  few,  hardly  five  or 
six,  in  whose  hands  the  transition  state  of  the  government 
left,  for  a  season,  unlimited  influence.  Into  the  interior  of 
the  colony  the  delusion  did  not  spread. 

The  house  of  representatives,  which  assembled  in     1692. 
June,  was  busy  with  its  griefs  at  the  abridgment  of'juiy2. 
the  old  colonial  liberties.    Increase  Mather,  the  agent,   June  9. 
was  heard  in  his  own  defence  ;  and,  at  last.  Bond,  the  June  24. 
speaker,  in  the  name  of  the  house,  tardily  and  lan- 
guidly thanked  him  for  his  faithful  and  unwearied  exer- 
tions.    No  recompense  was  voted.     "  I  seek  not  yours,  but 
you,"  said  Increase  Mather ;  "  I  am  willing  to  wait 
for  recompense  in  another  world ; "  and  the  general    July  2. 
court,  after  prolonging  the  validity  of  the  old  laws, 
adjourned  to  October. 

But  Phips  and  his  council  had  not  looked  to  the  gen- 
eral court  for  directions ;  they  turned  to  the  ministers  of 
Boston  and  Charlestown ;  and  from  them,  by  the  hand  of 
Cotton  Mather,  they  received  gratitude  for  their  sedulous 
endeavors  to  defeat  the  abominable  witchcrafts  ;  prayer  that 
the  discovery  might  be  perfected ;  a  caution  against  haste 


260  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX. 

and  spectral  evidence  ;  a  hint  to  affront  the  devil,  and  give 
him  the  lie,  by  condemning  none  on  his  testimony  alone ; 
while  the  direful  advice  w^as  added :  "  We  recommend  the 

speedy  and  vigorous  prosecution  of  such  as  have  ren- 
Jun?30.  <iered  themselves  obnoxious."     The  obedient  court, 

at  its  next  session,  condemned  five  women,  all  of 
blameless  lives,  all  declaring  their  innocence.  Four  were 
convicted  easily  enough;  Rebecca  Nurse  was,  at  first,  ac- 
quitted. "  The  honored  court  was  pleased  to  object  against 
the  verdict ; "  and,  as  she  had  said  of  the  confessing  wit- 
nesses, "  They  used  to  come  among  us,"  meaning  that  they 
had  been  prisoners  together,  Stoughton  interpreted  the 
words  as  of  a  witch  festival.  The  jury  withdrew,  and 
could  as  yet  not  agree ;  but,  as  the  prisoner,  who  was  hard 
of  hearing  and  full   of   grief,  made   no  explanation,  they 

no  longer  refused  to  find  her  guilty.  Hardly  was 
July 4.    the  verdict  rendered,  before  the   foreman   made  a 

statement  of  the  ground  of  her  condemnation,  and 
she  sent  her  declaration  to  the  court  in  reply.  The  gover- 
nor, who  himself  was  not  unmerciful,  saw  reason  to  grant  a 
reprieve ;  but  Parris  had  preached  against  Rebecca  Nurse, 
and  prayed  against  her ;  had  induced  "  the  afflicted "  to 
witness  against  her ;  had  caused  her  sisters  to  be  imprisoned 
for  their  honorable  sympathy.  She  must  perish,  or  the  de- 
lusion was  unveiled ;  and  the  governor  recalled  the  reprieve. 
On  the  next  communion  day,  she  was  taken  in  chains  to  the 

meeting-house,  to  be  formally  excommunicated  by 
July  19.  Noyes,  her  minister ;  and  was  hanged  with  the  rest. 

"  You  are  a  witch ;  you  know  you  are,"  said  Noyes 
to  Sarah  Good,  urging  a  confession.  "  You  are  a  liar,"  re- 
plied the  poor  woman ;  "  and,  if  you  take  my  life,  God  will 
give  you  blood  to  drink." 

Confessions  rose  in  importance.  "  Some,  not  afflicted 
before  confession,  were  so  presently  after  it."  The  jails 
were  filled ;  for  fresh  accusations  were  needed  to  confirm 
the  confessions.  "  Some,  by  these  their  accusations  of 
others," —  I  quote  the  cautious  apologist  Hale,  —  "  hoped  to 
gain  time,  and  get  favor  from  the  rulers."  "  Some  of  the 
inferior  sort  of  people  did  ill  offices,  by  promising  favor 


1692.        NEW  ENGLAND  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.        261 

thereby,  more  than  they  had  ground  to  engage.  Some, 
under  these  temptations,  regarded  not  as  they  should  what 
became  of  others,  so  that  they  could  thereby  serve  their 
own  turns.  Some  have  since  acknowledged  so  much."  If 
the  confessions  were  contradictory;  if  witnesses  uttered 
apparent  falsehoods,  "the  devil,"  the  judges  would  say, 
"takes  away  their  memory,  and  imposes  on  their  brain." 
And  who  now  would  dare  to  be  skeptical  ?  who  would  dis- 
believe confessors?  Besides,  there  were  other  evidences. 
A  callous  spot  was  the  mark  of  the  devil :  did  age  or  amaze- 
ment refuse  to  shed  tears ;  were  threats  after  a  quarrel  fol- 
lowed by  the  death  of  cattle  or  other  harm ;  did  an  error 
occur  in  repeating  the  Lord's  prayer ;  were  deeds  of  great 
physical  strength  performed,  —  these  all  were  signs  of  witch- 
craft. In  some  instances,  phenomena  of  somnambulism 
would  appear  to  have  been  exhibited;  and  "the  afflicted, 
out  of  their  fits,  knew  nothing  of  what  they  did  or  said  in 
them." 

Again,  on  a  new  session,  six  were  arraigned,  and  1692. 
all  were  convicted.  John  Willard  had,  as  an  officer,  ^"^-  ^• 
been  employed  to  arrest  the  suspected  witches.  Perceiving 
the  hypocrisy,  he  declined  the  service.  The  afflicted  imme- 
diately denounced  him,  and  he  was  seized,  convicted,  and 
hanged. 

At  the  trial  of  George  Burroughs,  the  bewitched  persons 
pretended  to  be  dumb.  "Who  hinders  these  witnesses," 
said  Stoughton,  "  from  giving  their  testimonies ? "  "I  sup- 
pose the  devil,"  answered  Burroughs.  "  How  comes  the 
devil,"  retorted  the  chief  judge,  "  so  loath  to  have  any  tes- 
timony borne  against  you?  "  and  the  question  was  effective. 
Besides,  he  had  given  proofs  of  great,  if  not  preternatural, 
muscular  strength.  Cotton  Mather  calls  the  evidence 
"enough:"  the  jury  gave  a  verdict  of  guilty. 

.  John  Procter,  who  foresaw  his  doom,  and  knew 
from  whom  the  danger  came,  sent  an  earnest  petition,     "  ^ 
not  to  the  governor  and  council,  but  to  Cotton  Mather  and 
the  ministers.     Among  the  witnesses  against  him  were  some 
who  had  made  no  confessions  till  after  torture.      "They 
have  already  undone  us  in  our  estates,  and  that  will  not 


262 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX. 


serve  their  turns  without  our  innocent  blood ; "  and  he 
begged  for  a  trial  in  Boston,  or,  at  least,  for  a  change  of 
magistrates.  His  entreaties  were  vain,  as  also  his  prayers, 
after  condemnation,  for  a  respite. 

Among  the  witnesses  against  Martha  Carrier,  the  mother 
saw  her  own  children.  Her  two  sons  refused  to  perjure 
themselves  till  they  had  been  tied  neck  and  heels  so  long 
that  the  blood  was  ready  to  gush  from  them.  The  confes- 
sion of  her  daughter,  a  child  of  seven  years  old,  is  still 
preserved. 

The  aged  Jacobs  was  condemned,  in  part,  by  the  evidence 
of  Margaret  Jacobs,  his  grand-daughter.  "Through  the 
magistrates'  threatenings  and  my  own  vile  heart,"  thus  she 
wrote  to  her  father,  "  I  have  confessed  things  contrary  to 
my  conscience  and  knowledge.  But,  oh !  the  terrors  of  a 
wounded  conscience  who  can  bear?"  And  she  confessed 
the  whole  truth  before  the  magistrates.  The  magistrates 
refused  their  belief,  and,  confining  her  for  trial,  proceeded 
to  hang  her  grandfather. 

1692.  These  five  were  condemned  on  the  third,  and 
Aug.  19.  iiange(i  on  the  nineteenth  of  August ;  pregnancy 
reprieved  Elizabeth  Procter.  To  hang  a  minister  as  a  witch 
was  a  novelty ;  but  Burroughs  denied  absolutely  that  there 
was,  or  could  be,  such  a  thing  as  witchcraft,  in  the  current 
sense.  This  opinion  wounded  the  self-love  of  the  judges,- 
for  it  made  them  the  accusers  and  judicial  murderers  of  the 
innocent.  On  the  ladder.  Burroughs  cleared  his  innocence 
by  an  earnest  speech,  repeating  the  Lord's  prayer  composedly 
and  exactly,  and  with  a  fervency  that  astonished.  Tears 
flowed  to  the  eyes  of  many ;  it  seemed  as  if  the  spectators 
would  rise  up  to  hinder  the  execution.  Cotton  Mather, 
on  horseback  among  the  crowd,  addressed  the  people,  cav- 
illing at  the  ordination  of  Burroughs,  as  though  he  had  been 
no  true  minister ;  insisting  on  his  guilt,  and  hinting  that  the 
devil  could  sometimes  assume  the  appearance  of  an  angel  of 
light ;  and  the  hanging  proceeded. 

Meantime,  the  confessions  of  the  witches  began  to  be 
directed  against  the  Anabaptists.  Mary  Osgood  was  dipped 
by  the  devil.     The  court  still  had  work  to  do.     On  the 


1692.       NEW  ENGLAND  AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.        263 

ninth,  six  women  were  condemned ;  and  more  convictions 
followed.  Giles  Cory,  the  octogenarian,  seeing  that  all  who 
denied  guilt  were  convicted,  refused  to  plead,  and  was  con- 
demned to  be  pressed  to  death.  The  horrid  sentence,  a 
barbarous  usage  of  English  law,  never  again  followed  in  the 
colonies,  was  executed  forthwith. 

On  the  twenty-second  of  September,  eight  persons  were 
led  to  the  gallows.  Of  these,  Samuel  Wardwell  had  con- 
fessed, and  was  safe ;  but,  from  shame  and  penitence,  he 
retracted  his  confession,  and,  speaking  the  truth  boldly,  he 
was  hanged,  not  for  witchcraft,  but  for  denying  witchcraft. 
Martha  Cory  was,  before  execution,  visited  in  prison  by 
Parris,  the  two  deacons,  and  another  member  of  his  church. 
The  church  record  tells  that,  self-sustained,  she  "impe- 
riously "  rebuked  her  destroyers,  and  "  they  pronounced  the 
dreadful  sentence  of  excommunication  against  lier."  In 
the  calmness  with  which  Mary  Easty  exposed  the  falsehood 
of  those  who  had  selected  from  her  family  so  many  victims, 
she  joined  the  noblest  fortitude  with  sweetness  of  temper, 
dignity,  and  resignation.  But  the  chief  judge  was  positive 
that  all  had  been  done  rightly,  and  "  was  very  impatient  in 
hearing  'any  thing  that  looked  another  way."  "  There  hang 
eight  firebrands  of  hell,"  said  Noyes,  the  minister  of  Salem, 
pointing  to  the  bodies  swinging  on  the  gallows. 

Already  twenty  persons  had  been  put  to  death  for  witch- 
craft ;  fifty-five  had  been  tortured  or  terrified  into  penitent 
confessions.  With  accusations,  confessions  increased ;  with 
confessions,  new  accusations.  Even  "  the  generation  of  the 
children  of  God "  were  in  danger  of  "  falling  under  that 
condemnation."  The  jails  were  full.  One  hundred  and 
fifty  prisoners  awaited  trial ;  two  hundred  more  were  ac- 
cused or  suspected.  It  was  also  observed  that  no  one  of 
the  condemned  confessing  witchcraft  had  been  hanged.  No 
one  that  confessed,  and  retracted  a  confession,  had  escaped 
either  hanging  or  imprisonment  for  trial.  No  one  of  the  con- 
demned who  asserted  innocence,  even  if  one  of  the  witnesses 
confessed  perjury,  or  the  foreman  of  the  juiy  acknowledged 
the  error  of  the  verdict,  escaped  the  gallows.  Favoritism 
was  shown  in  listening  to  accusations,  which  were  turned 


264  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX. 

aside  from  friends  or  partisans.  If  a  man  began  a  career  as 
a  witch-hunter,  and,  becoming  convinced  of  the  imposture, 
declined  the  service,  he  was  accused  and  hanged.  Persons 
accused,  who  had  escaped  from  the  jurisdiction  in  Massa- 
chusetts, were  not  demanded,  as  would  have  been  done  in 
case  of  acknowledged  crime ;  so  that  the  magistrates  acted  as 
if  witch-law  did  not  extend  beyond  their  jurisdiction.  Wit- 
nesses convicted  of  perjury  were  cautioned,  and  permitted 
still  to  swear  away  the  lives  of  others.  It  was  certain  that 
people  had  been  tempted  to  become  accusers  by  promise 
of  favor.  Yet  the  zeal  of  Stoughton  was  unabated,  and  the 
arbitrary  court  adjourned  to  the  first  Tuesday  in  November. 
"  Between  this  and  then,"  wrote  Brattle,  "  wdll  be  the  great 
assembly,  and  this  matter  will  be  a  peculiar  subject  of  agi- 
tation. Our  hopes,"  he  adds,  "  are  here."  The  representa- 
tives of  the  people  must  stay  the  evil,  or  "  New  England  is 
undone  and  undone." 

Far  different  was  the  reasoning  of  Cotton  Mather.  He 
was  met  "  continually  with  all  sorts  of  objections  and  ob- 
jectors against  the  work  doing  at  Salem."  The  obstinate 
Sadducees,  "  the  witch  advocates,"  who  esteemed  the  exe- 
cutions to  be  judicial  murders,  gained  such  influence  as  to 
embarrass   the  governor.      But  Cotton  Mather,  still  eager 

"  to  lift  up  a  standard  against  the  infernal  enemy," 
Sep^"20.  undertook  the  defence  of  his  friends  ;  and  he  sent  to 

Salem  for  an  account  strong  enough  "  to  knock  down  " 
"  one  that  believed  nothing  reasonable,"  promising  "  to  box 
it  about  among  his  neighbors   till   it  come  he  knows  not 

where  at  last."  Before  the  opening  of  the  adjourned 
Oct.  12.    session  of  the  general  court,  the  indefatigable  man 

had  prepared  his  narrative  of  "  the  Wonders  of  the 
Invisible  World,"  in  the  design  of  promoting  "a  pious 
thankfulness  to  God  for  justice  being  so  far  executed  among 
us."  For  this  book  he  received  the  approbation  of  the  pres- 
ident of  Harvard  College,  the  praises  of  the  governor,  and 
the  gratitude  of  Stoughton. 

On  the  second  Wednesday  in  October,  1692,  about  a 
fortnight  after  the  last  hanging  of  eight  at  Salem,  the 
representatives  of  the  colony  assembled;  and  the  people 


1693.        NEW  ENGLAND   AFTER  THE  REVOLUTION.        265 

of  Andover,  their  minister  joining  with  them,  appeared  with 
their  remonstrance  against  the  doings  of  the  witch  tri- 
bunals. "  We  know  not,"  say  they,  "  who  can  think  oSs. 
himself  safe,  if  the  accusations  of  children,  and  others 
under  a  diabolical  influence,  shall  be  received  against  per- 
sons of  good  fame."  Of  the  discussions  that  ensued  no 
record  is  preserved  ;  we  know  only  the  issue.  The  general 
court  did  not  place  itself  in  direct  opposition  to  the  advo- 
cates of  the  trials  :  it  ordered  by  bill  a  convocation  of  min- 
isters, that  the  people  might  be  led  in  the  right  way  as  to 
the  witchcraft.  The  reason  for  doing  it  and  the  manner 
were  such  that  the  judges  of  the  court,  so  wrote  one  of 
them,  "consider  themselves  thereby  dismissed."  As  to 
legislation,  it  adopted  what  King  William  rejected,  —  the 
English  law,  word  for  word,  as  it  was  enacted  by  a  house 
of  commons  in  which  Coke  and  Bacon  were  the  guiding 
minds;  but  they  abrogated  the  special  court,  and  estab- 
lished a  tribunal  by  statute.  Phips  had,  instantly  on  his 
arrival,  employed  his  illegal  court  in  hanging ;  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  people  delayed  the  first  assembling  of  the 
legal  colonial  court  till  January  of  the  following  year.  Thus 
an  interval  of  more  than  three  months  from  the  last  execu- 
tions gave  the  public  mind  security  and  freedom ;  and 
though  Phips  still  conferred  the  place  of  chief  judge  on 
Stoughton,  yet  jurors,  representing  the  public  mind, 
acted  independently.  When  the  court  met  at  Salem,  j^^; 
six  women  of  Andover,  at  once  renouncing  their 
confessions,  treated  the  witchcraft  but  as  something  so 
called,  the  bewildered  but  as  "seemingly  afflicted."  A 
memorial  of  like  tenor  came  from  the  inhabitants  of  An- 
dover. 

Of  the  presentments,  the  grand  jury  dismissed  more  than 
half ;  and,  if  it  found  bills  against  twenty-six,  the  trials  did 
but  show  the  feebleness  of  the  testimony  on  which  others 
had  been  condemned.  The  minds  of  the  juries  became  en- 
lightened before  those  of  the  judges.  The  same  testimony 
was  produced,  and  there,  at  Salem,  with  Stoughton  on  the 
bench,  verdicts  of  acquittal  followed:  "Error  died  among 
its  worshippers."     Three  had,  for  special  reasons,  been  con- 


266  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX. 

victed  :  one  was  a  wife,  whose  testimony  had  sent  her  hus- 
band to  the  gallows,  and  whose  confession  was  now  used 
against  herself.     All  were  reprieved,  and  soon  set  free. 
1693.  Reluctant  to  yield,  the  party  of  superstition  were 

Feb.  resolved  on  one  conviction.  The  victim  selected 
was  Sarah  Daston,  a  woman  of  eighty  years  old,  who  for 
twenty  years  had  enjoyed  the  undisputed  reputation  of  a 
witch  :  if  ever  there  were  a  witch  in  the  world,  she,  it  was 
said,  was  one.  In  the  presence  of  a  throng,  the  trial  went 
forward  at  Charlestown  :  there  was  more  evidence  against 
her  than  against  any  at  Salem ;  but  the  common  mind  was 
disinthralled,  and  asserted  itself,  through  the  jury,  by  a 
verdict  of  acquittal. 

To   cover  his   confusion.  Cotton    Mather  got   up  a  case 

of  witchcraft  in  his  own  parish.  Miracles,  he  avers, 
Sept.      were  wrought   in    Boston.     Believe  his  statements, 

and  you  must  believe  that  his  prayers  healed  diseases. 
But  he  was  not  bloodthirsty  ;  he  wished  his  vanity  protected, 
not  his  parishioners  hanged;  and  his  bewitched  neophyte, 
profiting  by  his  cautions,  was  afflicted  by  veiled  spectres. 
The  imposture  was  promptly  exposed  to  ridicule  by  "  a 
malignant,  calumnious,  and  reproachful  man,"  "  a  coal  from 
hell,"  the  unlettered  but  rational  and  intelligent  Robert 
Calef.  Was  Cotton  Mather  honestly  credulous?  Ever 
ready  to  dupe  himself,  he  limited  his  credulity  only  by  the 
probable  credulity  of  others.  He  changes,  or  omits  to 
repeat,  his  statements,  without  acknowledging  error,  and 
with  a  clear  intention  of  conveying  false  impressions.  He 
is  an  example  how  far  selfishness,  under  the  form  of  vanity 
and  ambition,  can  blind  the  higher  faculties,  stupefy  the 
judgment,  and  dupe  consciousness  itself.  His  self-righteous- 
ness was  complete,  till  he  was  resisted.  As  the  recall  of 
Phips,  a  consequence  of  his  rashness  and  imbecility,  left 
the  government  for  some  years  in  the  hands  of  Stoughton, 
the  press  was  restrained  :  when,  at  last,  the  narrative  of 
Calef  appeared.  Cotton  Mather  endeavored  to  shield  himself 
by  calling  his  adversaries  the  advei*saries  of  religion ;  and, 
though  hardly  seven  or  eight  of  the  ministers,  and  no  mag- 
istrate of  popular  appointment,  had  a  share  in  the  guilt, 


1693.        NEW  ENGLAND  AFTER  THE   REVOLUTION.        267 

he  strove,  but  ineffectually,  to  hold  up  the  book  as  "  a  libel 
upon  the  whole  government  and  ministry  of  the  land." 
Denying  the  jurisdiction  of  popular  opinion,  he  claimed  the 
subject  as  "  too  dark  and  deep  for  ordinary  comprehension," 
and  appealed  for  a  decision  to  the  day  of  judgment.  But 
the  sentence  was  not  delayed.  The  inexorable  indignation 
of  the  people  of  Salem  village  drove  Parris  from  the  place  ; 
Noyes  regained  favor  only  by  a  full  confession,  asking  for- 
giveness always,  and  consecrating  the  remainder  of  his  life 
to  deeds  of  mercy.  Sewall,  one  of  the  judges,  by  rising  in 
his  pew  in  the  Old  South  meeting-house  on  a  fast  day,  and 
reading  to  the  whole  congregation  a  paper  in  which  he  be- 
wailed his  great  offence,  recovered  public  esteem.  Stough- 
ton  and  Cotton  Mather  never  repented.  The  former  lived 
proud,  unsatisfied,  and  unbeloved ;  the  latter  attempted  to 
persuade  others  and  himself  that  he  had  not  been  specially 
active  in  the  tragedy.  His  diary  proves  that  he  did  not 
wholly  escape  the  rising  impeachnient  from  the  monitor 
within ;  and  Cotton  Mather,  who  had  sought  the  foundation 
of  faith  in  tales  of  wonders,  himself  "  had  temptations  to 
atheism,  and  to  the  abandonment  of  all  religion  as  a  mere 
delusion." 

The  common  mind  of  New  England  was  more  wise.  It 
never  wavered  in  its  faith  ;  more  ready  to  receive  every  tale 
from  the  invisible  world  than  to  gaze  on  the  universe  with- 
out acknowledging  an  Infinite  Intelligence.  But,  employ- 
ing a  cautious  spirit  of  search,  eliminating  error,  rejecting 
superstition  as  tending  to  cowardice  and  submission,  cher- 
ishing religion  as  the  source  of  courage  and  the  fountain  of 
freedom,  it  refused  henceforward  to  separate  belief  and 
reason.  In  the  west  of  Massachusetts,  and  in  Connecticut, 
to  which  the  influence  of  Cotton  Mather  and  its  conse- 
quences did  not  extend,  we  must  look  for  the  unmixed 
development  of  the  essential  character  of  New  England; 
there  faith  and  "  common  sense  "  were  reconciled.  In  the 
vicinity  of  Boston,  the  skepticism  of  free  inquiry  conducted 
some  minds  to  healthy  judgments ;  others  asserted  God  to 
be  the  true  being,  the  devil  to  be  but  a  nonentity,  and  diso- 
bedience to  God  to  be  the  only  possible  compact  with  Satan  j 


268  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX. 

Others,  still  clinging  to  the  letter  of  the  Bible,  yet  showed 
the  insufficiency  of  all  evidence  for  the  conviction  of  a  witch ; 
others  denied  witchcraft,  as  beyond  comprehension,  involv- 
ing a  contradiction,  and  not  sustained  by  the  evidence  of 
experience.  The  invisible  world  began  to  be  less  consid- 
ered ;  men  trusted  more  to  observation  and  analysis ;  and 
this  philosophy,  derived  from  the  senses,  was  analogous  to 
their  civil  condition.  The  people  could  hope  from  England 
for  no  concession  of  larger  liberties.  Instead,  therefore,  of 
looking  for  the  reign  of  absolute  right,  they  were  led  to 
reverence  the  forms  of  their  privileges  as  exempt  from 
change.  We  hear  no  more  of  the  theocracy  where  God  was 
alone  supreme  lawgiver  and  king ;  no  more  of  the  expected 
triumph  of  freedom  and  justice  anticipated  "  in  the  second 
coming  of  Christ : "  liberty,  in  Massachusetts,  was  defended 
by  asserting  the  sanctity  of  compact,  and  the  inherent  right 
to  all  English  liberties. 

On  the  organization  of  the  new  government,  in 
1692.  1692,  its  first  body  of  representatives,  with  the  con- 
sent of  the  council  and  the  royal  governor,  enacted 
that  "  the  rights  and  liberties  of  the  people  shall  be  firmly 
and  strictly  holden  and  observed,"  that  "  no  aid,  tax,  tallage, 
assessment,  custom,  loan,  benevolence,  or  imposition  what- 
soever, shall  be  laid,  assessed,  imposed,  or  levied  on  any  of 
their  majesties'  subjects,  or  their  estates,  on  any  color  or 
pretence  whatsoever,  but  by  the  act  and  consent  of  the 
governor,  council,  and  representatives  of  the  people  assem- 
bled in  general  court."  "  All  trials  shall  be  by  the  verdict 
of  twelve  men,  peers  or  equals,  and  of  the  neighborhood, 
and  in  the  county  or  shire,  where  the  fact  shall  arise." 

Such  were  the  declared  opinions  of  the  colony,  though 
never  confirmed  by  the  king.  The  same  legislature,  in 
November,  1692,  renewed  the  institution  of  towns,  the 
glory  and  the  strength  of  New  England.  The  inhabited 
part  of  Massachusetts  was  recognised  as  divided  into  little 
territories,  each  of  which,  for  its  internal  purposes,  consti- 
tuted a  separate  integral  democracy,  free  from  supervision ; 
having  power  to  elect  annually  its  own  officers;  to  hold 
meetings  of  all  freemen  at  its  own  pleasure;  to  discuss  in 


1692.        NEW  ENGLAND  AFTER   THE  REVOLUTION.        269 

those  meetings  any  subject  of  public  interest ;  to  elect,  and, 
if  it  pleased,  to  instruct  its  representatives ;  to  raise,  appro- 
priate, and  expend  money  for  the  support  of  the  ministry, 
of  schools,  of  the  poor,  and  for  defraying  other  necessary 
expenses  within  the  town.  Royalists  afterwards  deplored 
that  the  law,  which  confirmed  these  liberties,  received  the 
unconscious  sanction  of  William  III.  Maine,  which  was  a 
part  of  Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire,  Connecticut,  and 
Rhode  Island,  had  similar  regulations ;  so  that  all  New  Eng- 
land was  an  aggregate  of  municipal  democracies. 

The  late  agent,  Elisha  Cooke,  a  patriot  never  willing  to 
submit  to  the  acts  of  trade,  never  consenting  to  the  least 
diminution  of  freedom,  the  frank,  sincere,  persistent  friend 
of  popular  power,  proposed,  as  the  lawful  mode  of  control- 
ling the  officers  appointed  by  the  king,  to  establish  a  fixed 
salary  for  no  one  of  them,  to  perpetuate  no  public  revenue. 
This  advice  was  as  old  as  the  charter.  The  legislature,  con- 
forming to  it,  refused  from  the  beginning  to  vote  a  perma- 
nent establishment,  and  left  the  king's  governor  dependent 
on  their  annual  grants.  Phips,  the  first  royal  governor  in 
Massachusetts,  was  the  first  to  complain  that  "no  salary 
was  allowed  or  was  intended,"  and  was  the  first  to  solicit 
the  interference  of  the  king  for  relief. 

His  successor,  the  Earl  of  Bellomont,  found  himself  equally 
a  pensioner,  dependent  solely  on  the  benevolence  of  the  as- 
sembly. The  same  policy  was  sure  to  be  followed,  when,  on 
the  death  of  Bellomont,  the  colony  had  the  grief  of  receiv- 
ing as  its  governor,  under  a  commission  that  included  New 
Hampshire,  its  own  apostate  son,  Joseph  Dudley,  the  great 
supporter  of  Andros,  "  the  wolf,"  whom  the  patriots  of  Bos- 
ton had  "  seized  by  the  ears,"  whom  the  people  had  insisted 
on  having  "in  the  jail,"  and  who,  for  twenty  weeks,  had 
been  kept  in  prison,  or,  as  he  termed  it,  had  been  "  buried 
alive."  He  obtained  the  place  by  the  request  of  Cotton 
Mather,  who  at  that  time  continued,  though  erroneously, 
to  be  regarded  in  England  as  the  interpreter  of  the  general 
wish  of  the  ministers. 

The  character  of  Dudley  was  that  of  profound  selfishness. 
He  possessed  prudence  and  the  inferior  virtues,  and  was  as 


270  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX. 

good  a  governor  as  one  could  be  who  loved  neither 

1702.  freedom  nor  his  native  land.     On  meeting  his  first 
assembly,  he  gave  "  instances  of  his  remembering  the 

old  quarrel,  and  the  people,  on  their  parts,  resolved  never 
to  forget  it."  "  All  his  ingenuity  could  not  stem  the  cur- 
rent of  their  prejudice  against  him."  A  stated  salary  was 
demanded  for  the  governor.  "  As  to  settling  a  salary  for  the 
governor,"  replied  the  house,  "it  is  altogether  new  to  us ;  nor 
can  we  think  it  agreeable  to  our  present  constitution  ;  but  we 
shall  be  ready  to  do  what  may  be  proper  for  his  support." 
"  This  country,"  wrote  his  son,  "  will  never  be  worth  living 
in,  for  lawyers  and  gentlemen,  till  the  charter  is  taken  away." 
In  vain  did  Dudley  endeavor  to  win  from  the  legislature 
concessions  to  the  royal  prerogative  ;  and  he  became  the 
active  opponent  of  the  chartered  liberties  of  New  England, 
endeavoring  to  effect  their  overthrow  and  the  establishment 
of  a  general  government  as  in  the  days  of  Andros. 

"  Even  many  of  the  councillors  are  commonwealth's 

1703.  men,"  wrote  Dudley,  in  1702  ;  and  in  September  of 
the  following  year,  when  the  royal  requisition  for  an 

established  salary  had  once  more  been  fruitlessly  made,  he 
urged  the  ministry  to  change  the  provincial  charter.  The 
choice  of  the  people  for  councillors  he  described  to  the 
board  of  trade  as  falling  on  "  persons  of  less  affection  to  the 
strict  dependence  of  these  governments  on  the  crown ;  till 
the  queen,"  said  he,  "  appoints  the  council,  nothing  will  go 
well."  It  was  not  an  Englishman  who  proposed  this  abridg- 
ment of  charter  privileges,  but  a  native  of  Massachusetts, 
son  of  one  of  its  earliest  magistrates,  himself  first  intro- 
duced to  public  affairs  by  the  favor  of  its  people. 


Chap.  XXXI.    PARLIAMENT  AND   THE   COLONIES.  271 


CHAPTER    XX^l, 

THE    RULE    OF    PARLIAMENT    AND    THE    COLONIES. 

During  the  long  contests  in  England,  popular  liberty  had 
thriven  vigorously  in  its  colonies,  like  the  tree  by  the  rivers 
of  water,  that  grows  in  the  night-time,  while  they  who  gave 
leave  to  plant  it  were  sleeping.  Their  governments  were 
the  most  free  that  the  world  had  ever  instituted.  They  had 
developed  a  system  of  equal  representative  government  in 
perfect  symmetry,  and  had  enjoyed  it  with  exact  regularity. 
In  the  reign  of  each  one  of  the  Stuarts,  England  was  left  for 
many  years  without  a  parliament.  From  the  time  that 
Southampton  and  Sandys  established  the  system  of  assem- 
blies in  Virginia,  it  was  maintained  there  by  an  unbroken 
usage  ;  and  the  distribution  of  the  representation  was  rela- 
tively fair  and  just.  So  it  was  in  Maryland,  and  so  too  in 
the  Carolinas,  in  Pennsylvania,  in  Delaware,  without  inter- 
ruption. In  New  England,  the  legislatures  of  all  the  chief 
colonies  met  twice  a  year  until  the  time  of  James  II.  The 
spirit  of  liberty  had  been  one  and  the  same  in  English 
statesmen  at  home  and  in  Englishmen  in  the  colonies,  with 
this  momentous  difference :  England  capitulated  with  the 
old  institutions  of  monarchy,  prelacy,  and  hereditary  aris- 
tocracy, which  it  was  alike  unwilling  and  unable  to  efface ; 
in  the  colonies,  neither  of  the  three  was  present.  The 
popular  element  which  had  been  baffled  in  the  older  country 
existed  in  America  without  a  master  or  even  a  rival. 

Great  Britain,  the  brilliant  star  of  representative  govern- 
ment for  Europe,  stood  against  the  Bourbons  and  the  Ro- 
man Catholic  world  on  the  one  side,  and  the  American  mind 
on  the  other.  The  outline  of  the  still  distant  conflict  was 
already  defined.  The  parliament,  which  had  made  itself 
supreme  by  electing  a  monarch  and  a  dynasty  for  the  Brit- 
ish dominions,  and  had  confirmed  imnmtably  its  right  of 


272  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXL 

meeting  every  year  as  the  fundamental  law  of  the  land,  did 
but  represent  England's  aristocracy ;  and  it  lay  in  the  very 
nature  of  the  Revolution  of  1688  that  the  parliament  would 
one  day  assert  its  sovereignty  in  the  widest  range.  Yet 
for  the  present  its  •power  was,  in  general  terms,  unques- 
tioned in  England  even  by  American  agents,  and  was  by 
itself  interpreted  to  extend  over  all  the  colonies,  with  no 
limitation  but  its  own  pleasure.  It  held  itself  to  be  "  abso- 
lute and  unaccountable." 

We  may  leave  to  local  historians  the  detailed  enumera- 
tion of  the  petty  strifes  which  took  place  between  the 
several  colonies  and  royal  officers  and  informers  and  sub- 
ordinate bureaus  of  the  government.  For  our  purpose,  we 
need  only  present,  in  outline,  the  influence  on  the  colonies 
of  the  political  principles  of  the  revolution  in  state  and  in 
church,  and  explain  the  methods  in  which  English  statesmen 
felt  their  way  through  much  evil  to  the  system  of  colonial 
government,  which,  in  its  present  state,  is  the  fairest  monu- 
ment of  the  greatness  of  the  English  nation. 

The  revolution  sanctioned  for  England  the  right  of  resist- 
ance to  tyranny.  In  like  manner,  the  colonies  rose  to  assert 
their  charters  and  their  English  liberties.  The  three  royal 
governments  —  New  York,  New  Hampshire,  and  Virginia 
—  rivalled  the  proprietary  ones.  They  all  were  encouraged 
to  assert  their  privileges  as  possessing  a  sanctity  which  tyr- 
anny only  could  disregard,  and  which  could  perish  only  by 
destroying  allegiance  itself. 

In  England,  the  right  to  representation  could  never 
again  be  separated  from  the  power  of  taxation,  and  this 
was  the  peaceful  method  of  avoiding  all  conflict  with  the 
king,  and  holding  him  in  tranquil  dependence  :  the  colonies 
in  like  manner  sought  the  bulwark  for  their  liberties  and 
their  peace  in  their  exclusive  right  of  taxing  themselves. 

The  antagonism  between  a  parliament  which  held  itself 
supreme  and  legislatures  which  claimed  to  be  co-ordinate 
lay  in  the  nature  of  things.  The  settlement  of  the  church 
in  England  wrought  for  England  incalculable  evil  and  in- 
finite advantage  for  the  colonies.  The  statute-book  of  Eng- 
land, in  the  last  third  of  the  seventeenth  century,  over  and 


Chap.  XXXI.     PAKLIAMENT  AND   THE   COLONIES.  273 

over  again  declared  the  church  of  England  a  Protestant 
church,  but  neither  its  convocation  nor  its  Book  of  Common 
Prayer  accepted  the  name,  and  nothing  was  done  to  bring 
it  into  harmony  with  the  Lutheran  and  Reformed  churches 
of  the  continent.  The  men  who  carried  the  principles  of 
the  Reformation  most  fully  to  their  logical  conclusions,  and 
whose  aid  had  been  required  to  bring  about  the  revolution, 
were  debarred  from  the  service  of  the  state.  The  centre  of 
gravity  for  that  great  part  of  English  culture  which  the 
Puritans  had  represented  and  which  England  could  not 
spare  was  transferred  to  colonies,  where  the  heartiest  wel- 
come and  the  brightest  career  awaited  alike  Independents 
and  Presbytrians. 

The  still  more  grievous  and  more  fatal  intolerance  of  the 
Anglicans  in  Ireland  turned  the  emigration  of  British  Puri- 
tans and  Presbyterians  away  from  that  island,  and  directed 
it  exclusively  to  America ;  and  the  Irish  Protestants,  after 
ages  of  persecution  had  trained  them  to  faith  in  the  right- 
fulness of  resisting  oppression,  were  driven  by  their  sorrows 
to  the  same  j^lace  of  refuge.  They  formed  the  most  numer- 
ous and  best  class  of  comers  during  the  sixty  years  which 
followed  the  English  revolution,  weakening  Protestantism 
in  Ireland  irreparably  by  their  departure,  and  in  their  new 
homes  animating  zeal  for  independence  by  the  recollection 
of  intolerable  wrongs.  Between  the  Presbyterian  emigrat- 
ing directly  from  Scotland  and  the  Scotch-Irish,  the  different 
conditions  to  which  they  had  been  exposed  produced  varie- 
ties in  respect  to  political  purposes  and  action.  The  former 
took  with  them  lessons  from  the  Roman  law,  the  latter  from 
the  creed  of  Geneva. 

King  William,  by  his  election  to  the  English  throne, 
involved  his  kingdom  in  a  desperate  struggle  with  France  ; 
and  his  great  object  in  the  administration  of  the  colonies 
was  their  union,  that  he  might  employ  all  their  resources 
in  the  war. 

The  accession  of  James  II.  brought  to  the  throne  a  man 

of  a  fixed  and  absolute  will,  who,  as  an  American  proprietary 

of  nearly  five-and-twenty  years'  experience,  knew  what  he 

>  wanted,  and  had  formed  his  system  of  colonial  government 

VOL.   II.  18 


274 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXL 


in  America.  Six  northern  colonies  were  consolidated  under 
one  captain-general,  who,  with  a  council  likewise  appointed 
by  himself,  was  invested  with  legislative  power.  This  arbi- 
trary system,  which  was  to  have  been  extended  to  all,  ap- 
peared to  give  to  him  a  colonial  civil  list  and  revenue  at 
his  discretion;  to  make  his  servants  directly  and  solely 
dependent  on  himself;  and,  by  uniting  so  many  colonies 
under  one  military  chief,  to  erect  a  barrier  against  the 
Indians,  and  against  French  encroachments. 
168510  C)n  reaching  the  throne,  in  1685,  James  II.  adopted 
^^^-  the  purpose  of  reducing  "  the  independent "  colonial 
administrations ;  and  with  promptness,  consistency,  and  de- 
termination, employed  the  prerogative  for  that  end.  The 
letters  patent  of  Massachusetts  were  ah-eady  cancelled ; 
those  of  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island,  of  Maryland,  of 
New  Jersey,  of  Carolina,  were  to  be  annulled  or  surren- 
dered. But  the  system  vanished  like  the  shadow  of  a 
cloud,  having  no  root  in  the  colonies,  and  being  adverse 
to  the  principle  now  formally  recognised  in  the  English 
institutions. 

jggg^  In  February,  1689,  at  the  instance  of  Sir  George 

Feb.  Treby,  the  .convention  which  made  William  III.  king 
voted  "  that  the  plantations  ought  to  be  secured  against 
quo  warrantos  and  surrenders,  and  their  ancient  rights 
restored."  But  the  clause  in  their  favor  did  not  reappear 
in  later  proceedings  ;  they  are  not  named  in  the  declaration 
of  rights;  their  oppression  by  James  was  not  enumerated 
as  one  of  the  causes  of  the  revolution ;  and  Somers  would 
not  include  the  Massachusetts  charter  in  the  bill  for  restor- 
ing corporations.  The  plan  of  James  II.  was  so  far  adopted 
that  twice  several  northern  provinces  were  grouped  together 
under  one  governor. 

The  first  soldiers  sent  to  America  after  the  revolution 
were  two  companies  ordered  to  New  York  in  1689,  and 
which  seem  to  have  arrived  there  in  1691.  They  were  to 
be  paid  out  of  the  revenue  of  England,  till  provision  should 
be  made  for  them  at  New  York.  One  hundred  pounds, 
also,  were  sent  for  presents  to  the  Indians.  This  arrange- 
ment was  to  be  transient ;  the  ministry  never  designed  to 


1696.  PARLIAMENT  AND   THE  COIyONIES.  275 

make  the  defence  of  America  and  the  conduct  of  Indian 
relations  a  direct  burden  on  the  people  of  England. 

The  crown  had  no  funds  at  its  disposal  for  the  public 
defence.  The  conduct  of  a  war  required  union,  a  common 
treasury,  military  force,  and  a  central  will.  In  October, 
1692,  the  sovereign  of  England  attempted  this  union  by  an 
act  of  the  prerogative;  sending  to  each  colony  north  of 
Carolina  a  requisition  for  a  fixed  quota  of  money  and  of 
men  for  the  defence  of  New  York,  "the  outguard  of  his 
majesty's  neighboring  plantations  in  America."  This  is 
memorable  as  the  first  form  of  British  regulation  of  the  col- 
onies after  the  Revolution  of  1688.  The  requisition  was 
neglected.  Pennsylvania,  swayed  by  the  Society  of  Friends, 
attracted  notice  by  its  steadfast  disobedience. 

Yet  England  insisted  that  the  colonists  should  "  employ 
their  own  hands  and  purses  in  defence  of  their  own 
estates,  lives,  and  families  ; "  and,  in  1694,  when  two  i694. 
more  companies  at  New  York  were  placed  upon  the 
English  establishment,  and  when  artillery  and  ammunition 
were  furnished  from  "  the  king's  magazines,"  a  royal  man- 
datory letter  prescribed  to  the  several  colonies  the  exact 
proportion  of  their  quotas.  But  the  "  order,  by  reason  of 
the  distinct  and  independent  governments,"  was  "  very 
uncertainly  complied  with."  The  governor  of  New  York 
had  nothing  "  to  rely  on,  for  the  defence  of  that  frontier, 
but  the  four  companies  in  his  majesty's  pay."  Pennsyl- 
vania wholly  refused  its  contingent ;  while  Massachusetts 
urged  that,  as  "all  were  equally  benefited,  each  ought  to 
give  a  reasonable  aid." 

The  king  of  England  attempted  a  more  efficient  method 
of  administering  the  colonies ;  their  affairs  were  taken 
from  committees  of  the  privy  council ;  and,  in  May,  i696. 
1696,  a  board  of  commissioners  for  trade  and  planta- 
tions, consisting  of  the  chancellor,  the  president  of  the  privy 
council,  the  keeper  of  the  privy  seal,  the  two  secretaries 
of  state,  and  eight  special  commissioners,  was  called  into 
being.  To  William  Blathwayte,  John  Locke,  and  the  rest 
of  the  first  commission,  instructions  were  given  by  the  crown 
"  to  inquire  into  the  means  of  making  the  colonies  most  use- 


276 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXI 


ful  and  beneficial  to  England ;  into  the  staples  and  manu- 
factures which  may  be  encouraged  there  ;  into  the  means  of 
diverting  them  from  trades  which  may  prove  prejudicial  to 
England ;  to  examine  into  and  weigh  the  acts  of  the  assem- 
blies; to  set  down  the  usefulness  or  mischief  of  them  to 
the  crown,  the  kingdom,  or  the  plantations  themselves  ;  to 
require  an  account  of  all  the  moneys  given  for  public  uses 
by  the  assemblies  of  the  plantations,  and  how  the  same  are 
employed."  The  several  provinces  gained  unity  in  the 
person  of  the  king,  whose  duties  with  regard  to  the  colonies 
were  transacted  through  one  of  the  secretaries  of  state  ;  but 
the  board  of  trade  was  the  organ  of  inquiries  and  the  centre 
of  colonial  information.  Every  law  of  a  provincial  legisla- 
ture, except  in  some  of  the  charter  governments,  if  it  escaped 
the  veto  of  the  royal  governor,  might  be  arrested  by  the 
unfavorable  opinion  of  the  law  officer  of  the  crown,  or  by 
fhe  adverse  report  of  the  board  of  trade.  Its  rejection 
could  come  only  from  the  king  in  council,  whose  negative, 
even  though  the  act  had  gone  into  immediate  effect,  inval- 
idated every  transaction  under  it  from  the  beginning. 

The  board  of  trade  was  hardly  constituted,  before  it  was 
summoned  to  plan  unity  in  the  military  efforts  of  the 
provinces ;  and  Locke,  with  his  associates,  despaired,  on 
beholding  them  "crumbled  into  little  governments,  dis- 
united in  interests,  in  an  ill  posture  and  much  worse  dis- 
position to  afford  assistance  to  each  other  for  the 
1697.  future."  The  board,  "after  considering  with  their 
utmost  care,"  could  only  recommend  the  appoint- 
ment of  "a  captain-general  of  all  the  forces  and  all  the 
militia  of  all  the  provinces  on  the  continent  of  North 
America,  with  power  to  levy  and  command  them  for  their 
defence,  under  such  limitations  and  instructions  as  to  his 
majesty  shall  seem  best ; "  "  to  appoint  officers  to  train  the 
inhabitants  ; "  from  "  the  Quakers,  to  receive  in  money  their 
share  of  assistance;"  and  "to  keep  the  Five  Nations  firm 
in  friendship."  "  Rewards  "  were  to  be  given  "  for  all  exe- 
cutions done  by  the  Indians  on  the  enemy;  and  the  scalps 
they  bring  in  to  be  well  paid  for."  This  plan  of  a  military 
dictatorship  is  the  second  form  of  British  regulation. 


Chap.  XXXI.    PARLIAMENT  AND   THE   COLONIES.  277 

With  excellent  sagacity,  —  for  true  humanity  perfects 
the  judgment, — the  gentle  William  Penn,  forerunner  and 
teacher  of  Franklin  and  of  America,  matured  a  plan  of  a 
permanent  union,  by  a  national  representation  of  the  Amer- 
ican states.  On  the  eighth  day  of  February,  1697,  he  de- 
livered his  project  for  an  annual  "congress,"  as  he  termed 
it,  of  two  delegates  from  each  province,  with  a  special 
king's  commissioner  as  the  presiding  officer,  to  establish 
intercolonial  justice,  "to  prevent  or  cure  injuries  in  point 
of  commerce,  ...  to  consider  of  ways  and  means  to 
support  the  union  and  safety  of  these  provinces  against  the 
public  enemies.  In  this  congress,  the  quotas  of  men  and 
charge  will  be  much  easier  and  more  equally  set  than  it  is 
possible  for  any  establishment  here  to  do  ;  for  the  provinces, 
knowing:  their  own  condition  and  one  another's,  can  debate 
that  matter  with  more  freedom  and  satisfaction,  and  better 
adjust  and  balance  their  affairs,  in  all  respects,  for  their 
common  safety ; "  and  he  added,  "  The  'determination,  in 
the  assembly  I  propose,  should  be  by  plurality  of  voices." 

The  proposition  was  advocated  before  the  English  world 
in  the  vigorous  writings  of  Charles  Davenant.  He  dis- 
dained the  fear  of  a  revolt  of  the  colonies,  "while  they 
have  English  blood  in  their  veins  and  have"  profitable 
"  relations  with  England."  "  The  stronger  and  greater 
they  grow,"  thus  he  expressed  his  generous  confidence,  "  the 
ftiore  this  crown  and  kingdom  will  get  by  them.  Nothing 
but  such  an  arbitrary  power  as  shall  make  them  desperate 
can  bring  them  to  rebel.  .  .  .  And  as  care  should  be 
taken  to  keep  them  obedient  to  the  laws  of  England,  and 
dependent  upon  their  mother  country,  so  those  conditions, 
privileges,  terms,  and  charters  should  be  kept  sacred  and 
inviolate,  by  which  they  were  first  encouraged,  at  their 
great  expense  and  with  the  hazard  of  their  lives,  to  dis- 
cover, cultivate,  and  plant  remote  places.  .  .  .  Any  in- 
novations or  breach  of  their  original  charters  (besides  that 
it  seems  a  breach  of  the  public  faith)  may,  peradventure, 
not  tend  to  the  king's  profit." 

But  the  ministry  adopted  neither  the  military  dictator- 
ship of  Locke  and  his  associates,  nor  the  peaceful  congress 


278  COLONIAL   HISTORY.  Cha-p.  XXXL 

of  William  Penn,  nor  the  widely  read  and  long-remembered 
advice  of  Davenant,  but  trusted  the  affair  of  quotas  and 
salaries  to  royal  instructions.  Two  causes  served  to  protect 
the  colonies  from  any  other  system.  Responsible  ministers 
were  unwilling  to  provoke  a  conflict  with  them,  and  a  gen- 
erous love  of  liberty  in  the  larger  and  better  class  of 
Englishmen  compelled  them  as  patriots  to  delight  in  its 
extension  to  all  parts  of  the  English  dominions. 

England,  at  "  the  abdication  "  of  its  throne  by  the  Stuarts, 
was,  as  it  were,  still  free  from  debt ;  and  a  direct  tax  on 
America,  for  the  benefit  of  the  English  treasury,  was,  I 
think,  at  that  time  not  dreamed  of.  That  the  respective 
colonies  should  contribute  to  the  common  defence  against 
the  French  and  Indians  was  desired  in  America,  was  ear- 
nestly enjoined  from  England ;  but  the  demand  for  quotas 
continued  to  be  directed  to  the  colonies  themselves,  and 
was  refused  or  granted  by  the  colonial  assemblies,  as  their 
own  policy  prompted,  though  the  want  of  concert  and  the 
refusal  of  contributions  readily  suggested  the  interference 
of  parliament. 

If  the  declaratory  acts,  by  which  every  one  of  the  colonies 
asserted  their  right  to  the  privileges  of  Magna  Charta,  to 
the  feudal  liberty  of  freedom  from  taxation  except  with 
their  own  consent,  were  always  disallowed  by  the  crown,  it 
was  done  silently,  and  the  strife  on  the  power  of  parliament 
to  tax  the  colonies  was  willingly  avoided.  The  colonial 
legislatures  had  their  own  budgets ;  and  financial  questions 
arose :  Shall  the  grants  be  generally  for  the  use  of  the  crown, 
or  carefully  limited  for  specific  purposes  ?  Shall  the  moneys 
levied  be  confided  to  an  oflicer  of  royal  appointment,  or  to 
a  treasurer  responsible  to  the  legislature?  Shall  the  revenue 
be  granted  permanently,  or  from  year  to  year?  Shall  the 
salaries  of  the  royal  judges  and  the  royal  governor  be  fixed, 
or  depend  annually  on  the  popular  contentment?  These 
were  questions  consistent  with  the  relations  between  me- 
tropolis and  colony;  but  the  supreme  power  of  parliament 
to  tax  at  its  discretion  was  not  yet  maintained  in  England, 
was  always  denied  in  America. 

In  this  way,  there  grew  up  a  great  system  of  administra- 


Chap.  XXXI.    PARLIAMENT  AND  THE  COLONIES.  279 

tion  by  the  use  of  the  prerogative.  It  controlled  legislation. 
In  England,  the  veto  power  ceased  to  be  used.  In  the 
course  of  a  few  years,  it  came  to  be  applied  to  all  the  col- 
onies except  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island. 

The  crown  obtained  everywhere  the  mastery  over  the 
judiciary ;  for  the  judges,  in  nearly  all  the  colonies,  received 
their  appointments  from  the  king  and  held  them  at  his 
pleasure ;  and  the  right  of  appeal  to  the  king  in  council  was 
maintained  in  them  all.  Nor  was  the  power  given  up  to 
bring  a  chartered  colony,  by  a  scire  facias,  before  English 
tribunals. 

Where  the  people  selected  the  judges,  as  in  Connecticut 
and  Rhode  Island,  they  were  chosen  annually,  and  the 
public  preference,  free  from  fickleness,  gave  stability  to  the 
office;  whece  the  appointment  rested  with  the  royal  gov- 
ernor, the  popular  instinct  desired  for  the  judges  an  inde- 
pendent tenure  for  life.  The  security  of  personal  freedom 
was  not  formally  denied  to  America.  Massachusetts,  in  an 
enactment  of  1692,  claimed  the  full  benefit  of  the  writ  of 
habeas  corpus  ;  "  the  privilege  had.  not  yet  been  granted  to 
the  plantations,"  was  the  reply  even  of  Lord  Somers ;  it 
was  not  become  a  vested  right ;  and  the  act  was  disallowed. 
When,  afterwards,  the  privilege  was  affirmed  by  Queen 
Anne,  the  burgesses  of  Virginia,  in  their  gratitude,  did  but 
esteem  it  "  an  assertion  to  her  subjects  of  their  just  rights 
and  properties."  England  conceded  the  security  of  per- 
sonal freedom  as  a  boon  ;  America  claimed  it  as  a  birthright. 

Copying  the  precedents  of  the  Stuarts,  the  obsolete  in- 
structions, by  which  every  royal  governor  was  invested 
with  the  censorship  over  the  press,  were  renewed.  Yet,  in 
spite  of  them,  the  press  was  generally  as  free  in  America  as 
in  any  part  of  the  world. 

In  like  manner,  the  governors  were  commanded  to  "  allow 
no  one  to  preach  without  a  license  from  a  bishop ; "  but  the 
instruction  was,  for  the  most  part,  suffered  to  slumber. 
For  the  advancement  of  the  Anglican  church,  the  crown 
incorporated  and  favored  the  Society  for  Propagating  the 
Gospel  in  Foreign  Parts ;  but  to  dissenters  in  America  royal 
charters  were  refused. 


280  COLONIAL   HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXL 

The  most  terrible  of  the  royal  instructions  was  that  which 
fostered  slavery.  Before  the  English  crown  became  directly 
concerned  in  the  slave-trade,  governors  were  charged  to  keep 
the  market  open  for  merchantable  negroes ;  and  measures 
adopted  by  the  colonial  legislatures  to  restrain  the  traffic 
were  nullified  by  the  royal  veto. 

In  May,  1689,  the  lords  of  the  committee  of  colonies, 
willing  even  to  derive  power  from  the  usurpations  of  James 
II.,  represented  to  King  William  that  "  the  present  rela- 
tion" of  the  charter  colonies  to  England  is  a  matter 
"  worthy  of  the  consideration  of  parliament,  for  the  bring- 
ing those  proprieties  and  dominions  under  a  nearer  depen- 
dence on  the  crown."  But  at  that  time,  I  think,  nothing 
was  designed  beyond  the  strict  enforcement  of  the  naviga- 
tion acts. 

In  March,  1701,  less  than  ten  years  after  the  grant 

of  the  charter  of  Massachusetts,  the  board  of  trade 
invited  "  the  legislative  power  "  of  England  to  resume  all 
charters,  and  reduce  all  the  colonies  to  equal  "  dependency ; " 
and,  in  April,  a  bill  for  that  end  was  introduced  into  the 
house  of  lords. 

As  the  (ganger  of  a  new  war  with  France  increased, 
William  was  advised  that,  "  besides  the  assistance  he  might 
be  pleased  to  give  the  colonies,  it  was  necessary  that  the 
inhabitants  should  on  their  part  contribute  to  their  mutual 
security ; "  and  a  new  requisition  for  quotas  wa3  made  by 
the  warlike  sovereign.  For  Pennsylvania  the  quota  was 
three  hundred  and  fifty  pounds ;  William  Penn  himself  was 
present  to  urge  compliance ;  but  war,  reasoned  the  Quakers, 
is  not  better  than  peace  ;  trade  and  commerce  are  no  less 
important  than  weapons  of  offence  ;  and,  professing  "  readi- 
ness to  acquiesce  wtih  the  king's  commands,"  the  assembly 

of  Pennsylvania,  like  Massachusetts,  made  excuses 
Jan'       ^^^'  ^^  absolute  refusal.      Immediately  in  January, 

1702,  the  board  of  trade  turned  to  their  sovereign, 
representing  the  defenceless  condition  of  the  plantations  : 
"  Since  the  chartered  colonies  refuse  obedience  to  the  late 
requisitions,  and  continue  the  retreat  of  pirates  and  smug- 
glers, the  national  interest  requires  that  such  independent 


1706.  PARLIAMENT  AND   THE  COLONIES.  281 

administrations  should  be  placed  by  the  legislative  power  of 
this  kingdom  in  the  same  state  of  dependence  as  the  royal 
governments."  Such  was  the  deliberate  and  abiding  opin- 
ion of  the  board,  transmitted  across  half  a  century  to  the 
Earl  of  Halifax  and  Charles  Townshend.  But  the  charters 
had  nothing  to  fear  from  William  of  Orange  ;  for  him  the 
sands  of  life  were  fast  ebbing,  and  in  March  he  was  no 
more. 

The  white  inhabitants  of  British  America,  who,  at  the 
accession  of  William  III.,  were  about  one  hundred 
and  eighty  thousand,  were,  at  the  accession  of  Anne,  1702. 
at  least  two  hundred  and  seventy  thousand.  Their 
governors  were  instructed  to  proclaim  war  against  France  ; 
and  a  requisition  was  made  of  quotas  "  to  build  fortifications 
and  to  aid  one  another."  "  The  other  colonies  will  not 
contribute,"  wrote  Lord  Cornbury,  from  New  York,  "  till 
they  are  compelled  by  act  of  parliament ; "  and  he  after- 
wards solicited  "  an  act  of  parliament  for  the  establishment 
of  a  well-regulated  militia  everywhere."  In  Virginia,  the 
burgesses  would  do  nothing  "  that  was  disagreeable  to  a 
prejudiced  people,"  and  excused  themselves  from  comply- 
ing with  the  requisition.  So  did  all  the  colonies  :  "  New 
York,  the  Jerseys,  Pennsylvania,  the  Carolinas,"  were  in- 
formed against,  as  "transcripts  of  New  England,"  which 
furnished  "  the  worst  of  examples." 

"  Till  the  proprieties  are  brought  under  the  queen's 
government,"  wrote  Lord  Cornbury,  in  1702,  "  they  Ytoq^^ 
will  be  detrimental  to  the  other  settlements."  "  Con- 
necticut and  Ithode  Island,"  he  added,  the  next  year, 
"hate  everybody  that  owns  any  subjection  to  the  queen." 
The  chief  justice  of  New  York,  in  July,  1704,  assured  the 
secretary  of  state  that  "  antimonarchical  principles  and 
malice  to  the  church  of  England  daily  increase  in  most 
proprietary  governments,  not  omitting  Boston ;  and,  to  my 
own  knowledge,  some  of  their  leading  men  already  begin 
to  talk  of  shaking  off  their  subjection  to  the  crown  of 
England." 

Roused  by  continued  complaints,  the   privy  council,  in 
December,  1705,  summoned  the  board  of  trade  "  to  lay  be- 


282 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXI. 


fore  the  queen  the  misfeasances  of  the  proprieties,  and  the 
advantage  that  may  arise  from  reducing  them."  The 
Jan.  board  obeyed,  and,  in  the  following  January,  repre- 
sented the  original  defects  in  the  forms  of  the  char- 
ter governments,  their  assumed  independence,  their  antago- 
nism to  the  prerogative,  the  difficulty  of  executing  acts  of 
parliament  in  provinces  where  their  validity  was  scarcely 
admitted,  the  present  inconveniences  of  administration,  and 
the  greater  ones  which  were  to  come.  A  bill  was,  in  con- 
sequence, introduced  into  the  commons,  "  for  the  better 
regulation  of  the  charter  governments ; "  btit  it  was  not  sus- 
tained, for  the  ministry  were  divided  in  judgment  as  to  the 
remedy.  The  inquiry  in  the  house  of  lords,  in  1708,  was 
also  without  results. 

The  shyness  of  the  English  parliament  to  tax  America 
or  to  abrogate  American  charters  was  changed  into  eager- 
ness to  interfere  when  any  question  related  to  trade.  Of 
the  great  maritime  powers,  England  was  the  last  to  estab- 
lish the  colonial  system  in  its  severity  ;  yet,  pleading  "  the 
usage  of  other  nations  to  keep  their  plantations'  trade  to 
themselves,"  we  have  seen  that  she  also,  in  the  reign  of 
Charles  I.,  renewed  and  extended  that  colonial  monopoly, 
binding  it  up  in  a  corn  law.  Every  state,  it  was  argued, 
has,  in  exclusion  of  all  others,  an  indisputable  right  to  the 
services  of  its  own  subjects.  England  should  not  only  be 
the  sole  market  for  all  products  of  America,  but.  the  only 
storehouse  for  its  supplies. 

In  these  opinions,  the  change  of  dynasty  made  nO  differ- 
ence. The  enforcement  of  the  mercantile  system  in  its 
intensest  form  is  a  characteristic  of  the  policy  of  the  aris- 
tocratic revolution  of  England.  By  the  corn  laws,  English 
agriculture  became  an  associate  in  the  system  of  artificial 
legislation.  "  The  value  of  lands  "  began  to  be  urged  as  a 
motive  for  oppressing  the  colonies.  All  questions  on  colo- 
nial liberty  and  affairs  were  decided  from  the  point  of  view 
of  English  commerce  and  the  interests  of  the  great  land- 
holders. It  was  said  that  New  York  had  never  respected 
the  acts  of  trade ;  that  Pennsylvania  and  Carolina  were  the 
refuge  of   the   illicit   trader;    that   the   mariners   of   New 


i 


1699.  PARLIAMENT  AND   THE  COLONIES.  283 

England  distributed  the  productions  of  the  tropics 
through  the  world.  By  an  act  of  1696,  all  former  1696. 
acts  giving  a  monopoly  of  the  colonial  trade  to  Eng- 
land were  renewed,  and,  to  effect  their  rigid  execution,  the 
paramount  authority  of  parliament  was  strictly  asserted. 
Colonial  commerce  could  be  conducted  only  in  sliips  built, 
owned,  and  commanded  by  the  people  of  England  or  of  the 
colonies.  A  clause  giving  a  severe  construction  to  the  act 
of  1672  declared  that,  even  after  the  payment  of  export 
duties  on  the  products  of  the  colonies,  those  products 
should  not  be  taken  to  a  foreign  market ;  at  the  same  time, 
"  the  officers  for  collecting  and  managing  his  majesty's 
revenues"  in  America  obtained  equal  powers  of  visiting, 
Bearching,  and  entering  warehouses  and  wharfs  with  the  offi- 
cers of  the  customs  in  England  ;  charters  were  overruled,  — 
it  is  the  first  act  of  parliament  of  that  nature,  —  and  the  ap- 
pointment of  the  proprietary  governors  was  subj^ected  to  the 
royal  negative ;  all  governors  were  ordered  to  promise  by 
oath  their  utmost  efforts  to  carry  every  clause  of  the  acts  of 
trade  into  effect ;  and  every  American  law  or  custom  re- 
pugnant to  this  or  any  other  English  statute  for  the  colo- 
nies, made  or  hereafter  to  be  made,  was  abrogated,  as  "  ille- 
gal, null,  and  void,  to  all  intents  and  purposes  whatsoever." 

The  words  were  explicit,  both  declaratory  and  enacting ; 
but  it  was  not  easy  to  restrain  the  trade  of  a  conti- 
nent.    In  March,  1697,  the  house  of  lords,  after  an       i697. 
inquiry,  represented  to  the  king  the  continuance  of 
illegal  practices,  and  advised  "  courts  of  admiralty  in  the 
plantations,  that  offences  against  the  act  of  navigation  might 
no  longer  be  decided  by  judges  and  jurors  who  were  them- 
selves often  the   greatest  offenders.      The   commis- 
sioners for  the  customs  joined  in  the  demand ;  and       1698. 
royalists  of  the  next  century  were  glad  to  repeat  that 
Locke,  the  philosopher  of  liberty,  sanctioned  th*©  measure. 
The  crown  lawyers  overruled  all  -objections  derived   from 
proprietary  charters,  and  the  king  set  up  his.  courts  of  vice- 
admiralty  in  America. 

In  1699,  the  system,  which  made  England  the  only       1699. 
market  and  the  only  storehouse  for  the  colonies,  re- 


284  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXI. 

ceived  a  new  development  by  an  act  of  parliament,  which 
reached  the  door  of  every  farm-house  within  them,  and 
imbodied  the  despotic  will  of  a  selfishness  known  only  to 
highly  civilized  life.  As  yet,  the  owners  of  land  were  not 
sufficiently  pledged  to  the  colonial  system.  Wool  was  the 
great  staple  of  England,  and  its  growers  and  manufacturers 
envied  the  colonies  the  possession  of  a  flock  of  sheep,  a 
spindle,  or  a  loom.  The  preamble  to  an  act  of  parliament 
avows  the  motive  for  a  restraining  law  in  the  conviction, 
that  colonial  industry  would  "  inevitably  sink  the  value  of 
lands  "  in  England.  The  mother  country  could  esteem  the 
present  interest  of  its  landholders  paramount  to  natural  jus- 
tice. The  clause,  which  I  am  about  to  cite,  is  a  memorial  of 
a  delusion  which  once  pervaded  all  Western  Europe,  and 
whicli  has  already  so  passed  away  that  men  grow  incredulous 
of  its  former  existence  :  "  After  the  first  day  of  December, 
1699,  no  wool,  or  manufacture  made  or  mixed  with  wool, 
being  the  produce  or  manufacture  of  any  of  the  English 
plantations  in  America,  shall  be  loaden  in  any  ship  or  vessel, 
upon  any  pretence  whatsoever,  —  nor  loaden  upon  any  horse, 
cart,  or  other  carriage,  —  to  be  carried  out  of  the  English 
plantations  to  any  other  of  the  said  plantations,  or  to  any 
other  place  whatsoever."  The  fabrics  of  Connecticut  might 
not  seek  a  market  in  Massachusetts,  or  be  carried  to  Albany 
for  traffic  with  the  Indians.  An  English  sailor,  finding  him- 
self in  want  of  clothes  in  an  American  harbor,  might  buy 
there  forty  shillings'  worth  of  woollens,  but  not  more ;  and 
this  small  concession  was  soon  repealed.  Did  a  colonial 
assembly  show  favor  to  manufactures,  the  board  of  trade 
was  sure  to  interpose.  Error,  like  a  cloud,  must  be  seen 
from  a  distance  to  be  measured.  Somers  and  Locke  saw  no 
wrong  in  this  legislation,  as  Jeremy  Taylor  and  Berkeley 
had  seen  none  in  that  which  established  the  church  in  Ire- 
land. England,  in  its  relations  with  foreign  states,  sought 
a  convenient  tariff ;  in  the  colonies,  it  prohibited  industry. 
And  the  interests  of  landlords  and  manufacturers,  jointly 
fostered  by  artificial  legislation,  so  corrupted  the  public 
judgment  that  the  intolerable  injustice  of  the  mercantile 
system  was  not  surmised. 


1701.  PARLIAMENT  AND   THE   COLONIES.  285 

In  Virginia,  the  poverty  of  the  people  compelled  them  to 
attempt  coarse  manufactures,  or  to  go  unclad ;  yet  Nichol- 
son, the  royal  governor,  advised  that  parliament  should 
forbid  the  Virginians  to  make  their  own  clothing.  Spots- 
wood  repeats  the  complaint :  "  The  people,  more  of  necessity 
than  of  inclination,  attempt  to  clothe  themselves  with  their 
own  manufactures  ; "  adding  that  "  it  is  certainly  necessary 
to  divert  their  application  to  some  commodity  less 
prejudicial  to  the  trade  of  Great  Britain."  The  1701. 
charter  colonies  were  reproached  by  the  lords  of  trade 
"  with  promoting  and  propagating  woollen  and  other  manu- 
factures proper  to  England."  The  English  need  not  fear  to 
conquer  Canada  :  such  was  the  reasoning  of  an  American 
agent ;  for,  in  Canada,  "  where  the  cold  is  extreme,  and 
snow  lies  so  long  on  the  ground,  sheep  will  never  thrive 
so  as  to  make  the  woollen  manufactures  possible,  which  is 
the  only  thing  that  can  make  a  plantation  unprofitable  to 
the  crown."  The  policy  was  continued  by  every  admin- 
istration. 

To  the  enumerated  commodities  molasses  and  rice  were 
added  in  1704;  though  in  1730  rice  was  liberated. 

Irish  linen  cloth  was  afterwards  conditionally  excepted ; 
but  now,  at  the  end  of  three  years,  Ireland  was  abruptly 
dismissed  from  partnership  in  the  colonial  monopoly ;  even 
while  the  enumerated  products  might  still  be  carried  to 
"  other   English  plantations." 

An  English  parliament  could  easily  make  these  enact- 
ments, but  America  evaded  them  as  unjust.  From  Penn- 
sylvania, the  judge  of  the  court  of  admiralty  —  a  court 
hated  in  that  colony,  as  "  more  destructive  to  freedom  than 
the  ship-money"  —  wrote  home  that  his  "  commission  could 
be  of  no  effect,  while  the  government  denied  the  force  of 
the  acts  of  parliament ; "  and  though  William  Penn  entered 
a  plea  that  his  people  were  "  not  so  disobedient  aS  mistaken 
and  ignorant,"  yet  in  August,  1699,  the  board  of  trade 
reported  "  the  bad  disposition  of  that  people  and  the  mis- 
management of  that  administration,  as  requiring  a  speedy 
remedy." 

In  New  Hampshire,  Lord  Bellomont,  in  November,  1700, 


286  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXL 

found  that  the  people  "  laughed  at  the  orders  of  the  board  " 
of  trade  against  carrying  their  lumber  directly  to  Portugal. 
In  the  same  year,  the  councillors  of  Massachusetts  were 
openly  "indignant  at  the  acts  of  navigation;"  insisting 
that  "  they  were  as  much  Englishmen  as  those  in  England, 
and  had  a  right,  therefore,  to  all  the  privileges  which  the 
people  of  England  enjoyed."  And  the  people  of  Boston 
were  told  from  the  pulpit  that  they  were  "  not  bound  in 
conscience  to  obey  the  laws  of  England,  having  no  repre- 
sentatives there  of  their  choosing."  To  the  orders  sent  to 
Carolina,  "  to  prosecute  breaches  of  the  act  of  navigation," 
the  replies  were  but  complaints  "  of  encouragement  to  illicit 
trade,  and  opposition  to  the  officers  of  the  revenue  and  the 
admiralty."  "The  malignant  humor  of  the  proprietary- 
governments  "  infected  Maryland  and  Virginia.  From 
1688  to  1698,  the  plantation  duties  yielded  no  more  than 
the  expenses  of  management.  All  the  energy  of  authority 
could  make  the  plantation  duties  yield  to  the  exchequer  no 
more  than  about  a  thousand  pounds  a  year. 

The  maritime  wars  had  increased  piracy ;  and,  in 
iprii.  I'i^OO,  parliament  seized  the  opportunity  of  the  crime 
to  illustrate  its  authority.  It  defined  the  offence, 
overruled  patents  in  constituting  courts  for  its  trial,  and, 
should  a  charter  governor  fail  to  obey  the  new  statute, 
declared  the  charter  of  his  colony  forfeited.  "  The  parlia- 
ment, having  in  view  the  refractoriness  of  New  England 
and  other  plantations,"  thus  wrote  the  board  of  trade,  "  have 
now  passed  an  act  that  extends  to  all ;  by  which  those  of 
New  England  may  perceive  that,  where  the  public  good 
does  suffer  by  their  obstinacy,  the  proper  remedy  will  be 
found  here." 

To  "  make  most  of  the  money  centre  in  England,"  the 
lords  of  trade  proposed  a  regulation  of  the  colonial  currency, 
by  reducing  all  the  coin  of  America  to  one  standard.  The 
proclamation  of  Queen  Anne  confirmed  to  all  the  colonies 
a  depreciated  currency,  but  endeavored  to  make  the  depre- 
ciation uniform  and  safe  against  change.  In  a  word,  Eng- 
land sought  to  establish  for  itself  a  fixed  standard  of  gold 
and  silver;  for  the  colonies,  a  fixed  standard  of  deprecia- 


1704.  PARLIAMENT  AND   THE  COLONIES.  287 

tion.  As  the  colonies  had  of  themselves  depreciated  their 
currency,  England  gained  its  first  object  and  monopolized 
all  gold  and  silver.  Even  the  shillings  of  early  coinage  in 
Massachusetts  were  nearly  all  gathered  up,  and  remitted ; 
but  the  equality  of  depreciation  could  never  be  maintained 
against  the  rival  cupidity  of  the  competitors  in  bills  of 
credit.  In  1708,  an  act  of  parliament,  supporting  the  procla- 
mation of  Queen  Anne,  fixed  the  rates  of  coin  in  America, 
as  if  by  the  most  august  authority  to  limit  the  depreciation 
of  bills  ;  but  paper  money  continued  to  increase  in  the  royal, 
and  still  more  in  the  charter,  colonies.  Thus,  in  1709,  New 
York  first  emitted  bills  of  credit,  disposing  of  the  proceeds 
by  vote  of  the  assembly.  In  1710,  the  body  politic  of 
South  Carolina  issued  forty-eight  thousand  pounds,  which 
bore  interest,  and  were  loaned  to  individuals,  to  be  sunk  by 
small  annual  instalments.  These  depreciated  immediately, 
yet  formed  the  currency  of  the  colony. 

The  American  post-office  defrayed  its  own  expenses.  By 
an  act  of  prerogative,  William  III.  had,  in  1692,  appointed 
a  postmaster  for  the  northern  provinces.  New  York  feebly 
encouraged,  Massachusetts  neglected,  the  enterprise.  In 
1710,  the  British  parliament  erected  a  post-office  for  Amer- 
ica, establishing  the  rates  of  postage,  conferring  the  freedom 
of  all  ferries,  appointing  a  summary  process  for  collecting 
dues,  and  making  New  York  the  centre  of  its  operations. 
The  routes  of  the  mails  were  gradually  extended  through 
all  the  colonies;  Virginia,  where  it  was  introduced  in  1718, 
made  transient  resistance;  for  "the  people,"  as  Spotswood 
informed  the  board,  "  called  the  rates  of  postage  a  tax,  and 
they  believed  that  parliament  could  not  lay  any  tax  on  them 
without  the  consent  of  the  general  assembly."  But  the 
rates  of  postage  soon  came  to  be  regarded  as  an  equitable 
payment  for  a  valuable  service. 

The  British  parliament  interfered  for  one  other  purpose, 
not  so  directly  connected  with  trade.  In  1704,  to  emancipate 
the  English  navy  from  dependence  on  Sweden,  a  bounty 
was  offered  on  naval  stores,  and  was  accompanied  by  a 
proviso  which  extended  the  jurisdiction  of  parliament  to 
every  grove  north  of  the  Delaware.     Every  pitch-pine  tree, 


288 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXI. 


not  in  an  enclosure,  was  consecrated  to  the  purj^oses  of  the 
English  navy ;  and,  in  the  undivided  domain,  no  tree  fit  for 
a  mast  might  be  cut  without  the  queen's  license. 

Beyond  these  measures,  parliament  at  that  time  did  not 
proceed.  The  English  lawyers  of  the  day  had  no  doubt  of 
the  power  of  parliament  to  tax  America.  But  we  have  seen 
that  even  the  impetuous  Saint- John  would  not  carry  out  the 
plan  for  the  payment  of  royal  officers  in  the  colonies  by  a 
parliamentary  tax.  Oxford,  the  lord  treasurer,  looked  to 
America  for  the  means  of  supporting  its  own  military 
establishment.  In  August,  1711,  before  paying  the  gar- 
rison at  Port  Royal,  he  inquired  of  the  board  of  trade 
"whether  there  be  not  money  of  her  majesty's  revenue  in 
that  country  to  pay  them  ; "  and  in  June,  1713,  "  foreseeing 
that  great  expense  would  arise  to  the  kingdom  by  the  large 
supplies  of  stores  demanded  for  the  colonies,  he  desired  the 
board  of  trade  to  consider  how  they  might  be  made  to  sup- 
ply themselves."  But  the  absorbing  spirit  of  faction  within 
the  English  cabinet  of  itself  baffled  every  effort  at  system. 
The  papers  of  the  board  of  trade  began  to  lie  unnoticed 
in  the  office  of  the  secretary  of  state;  its  annual  reports 
ceased ;  and  whoever  had  colonial  business  to  transact  went 
directly  to  the  privy  council,  to  the  admiralty,  to  the 
treasury. 

But,  with  every  year  of  the  increase  of  the  colonies, 
prophecies  had  been  made  of  their  tendencies  t.o  indepen- 
dence. "  In  all  these  provinces  and  plantations,"  thus,  in 
August,  1698,  wrote  Nicholson,  who  had  been  in  office  in 
New  York  and  Maryland,  and  was  then  governor  of  Vir- 
ginia, "  a  great  many  people,  especially  in  those  under  pro- 
prietaries, and  the  two  others  of  Connecticut  and  Rhode 
Island,  think  that  no  law  of  England  ought  to  be  in  force 
and  binding  on  them  without  their  own  consent ;  for  they 
foolishly  say  that  they  have  no  representative  sent  from 
themselves  to  the  parliament,  and  they  look  upon  all  laws 
made  in  England,  that  put  any  restraint  upon  them,  to  be 
great  hardships."  Ireland  was  already  reasoning  in  the 
same  manner  ;  and  its  writers  joined  America  in  disavowing 
the  validity  of  British  statutes  in  nations  not  represented  in 
the  British  legislature. 


1706.  PARLIAMENT  AND  THE  COLONIES.  289 

In  1701,  the  lords  of  trade,  in  a  public  document,  de- 
clared "the  independency  the  colonies  thirst  after  is  now 
notorious."  "  Commonwealth  notions  improve  daily,"  wrote 
Quarry,  in  1703;  "and,  if  it  be  not  checked  an  time,  the 
rights  and  privileges  of  English  subjects  will  be  thought 
too  narrow."  In  1705,  it  was  said  in  print :  "  The  colonists 
will,  in  process  of  time,  cast  off  their  allegiance  to  England, 
and  set  up  a  government  of  their  own  ; "  and  by  degrees  it 
came  to  be  said  "  by  people  of  all  conditions  and  qualities, 
that  their  increasing  numbers  and  wealth,  joined  to  their 
great  distance  from  Britain,  would  give  them  an  oppor- 
tunity, in  the  course  of  some  years,  to  throw  off  their  de- 
pendence on  the  nation,  and  declare  themselves  a  free  state, 
if  not  curbed  in  time,  by  being  made  entirely  subject  to  the 
crown."  "  Some  great  men  professed  their  belief  of  the 
feasibleness  of  it,  and  the  probability  of  its  some  time  or 
other  actually  coming  to  pass." 


VOL.  II.  19 


290  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIL 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 

PBOGEESS    OF   FRANCE    IN   NOKTH    AMERICA. 

If  our  country,  in  the  inherent  opposition  between  its 
principles  and  the  English  system,  was  as  ripe  for  govern- 
ing itself  in  1689  as  in  1776,  the  colonists  disclaimed,  and 
truly,  a  present  passion  for  independence.  A  deep  instinct 
gave  assurance  that  the  time  was  not  yet  come.  They  were 
not  merely  colonists  of  England,  but  they  were  riveted  into 
an  immense  colonial  system,  which  every  commercial  coun- 
try in  Europe  had  assisted  to  frame,  and  which  bound  in  its 
strong  bonds  every  other  quarter  of  the  globe.  The  ques- 
tion of  independence  would  be  not  a  private  strife  with 
England,  but  a  revolution  in  the  commerce  and  in  the  pol- 
icy of  the  world;  in  the  present  fortunes,  and,  still  more, 
in  the  prospects  of  humanity  itself.  As  yet,  there  was  no 
union  among  the  settlements  that  fringed  the  Atlantic ;  and 
but  one  nation  in  Europe  would,  at  that  day,  have  tolerated 
—  not  one  would  have  fostered  —  an  insurrection.  Spain, 
Spanish  Belgium,  Holland,  and  Austria  were  then  the  allies 
of  England  against  France,  which,  by  centralizing  its  power 
and  by  well-considered  plans  of  territorial  aggrandizement, 
excited  the  dread  of  a  universal  monarchy.  When  Austria, 
with  Belgium,  shall  abandon  its  hereditary  warfare  against 
France  ;  when  Spain  and  Holland,  favored  by  the  armed 
neutrality  of  Portugal,  Sweden,  Denmark,  Prussia,  and 
Russia,  shall  be  ready  to  join  with  France  in  repressing  the 
commercial  ambition  of  England,  —  then,  and  not  till  then, 
American  independence  becomes  possible.  Those  changes, 
extraordinary  and  improbable  as  they  might  have  seemed, 
were  to  spring  from  the  false  principles  of  the  mercantile 
system,  which  made  France  and  England  enemies.  Our 
borders  were  become  the  scenes  of  jealous  collision ;  our 
soil  was  the  destined  battle-ground  on  which  the  grand  con- 


Chap.  XXXII.    PROGRESS  OF  FRANCE  IN  AMERICA.  291 

flict  of  the  rivals  for  commercial  privilege  was  to  begin. 
The  struggles  for  maritime  and  colonial  dominion,  which 
transformed  the  unsuccessful  competitors  for  supremacy 
into  the  defenders  of  the  freedom  of  the  seas,  having,  in 
their  progress,  taught  our  fathers  union,  secured  to  our 
country  the  opportunity  of  independence. 

The  mercantile  system  placed  the  benefit  of  commerce, 
not  in  a  reciprocity  of  exchanges,  but  in  a  favorable  balance 
of  trade.  Its  whole  wisdom  was  to  sell  as  much  as  possible, 
to  buy  as  little  as  possible.  Pushed  to  its  extreme,  the  pol- 
icy would  destroy  all  commerce  ;  it  might  further  the  selfish 
aims  of  an  individual  nation ;  the  commerce  of  the  world 
could  flourish  only  in  spite  of  it.  In  its  mitigated  form,  it 
was  a  necessary  source  of  European  wars ;  for  each  nation, 
in  its  traffic,  sought  to  levy  tribute  in  favor  of  its  industry, 
and  the  adjustment  of  tariffs  and  commercial  privileges  was 
the  constant  subject  of  negotiations  among  states.  The 
jealousy  of  one  country  envied  the  wealth  of  a  rival  as  its 
own  loss. 

Territorial  aggrandizement  was  also  desired  and  feared, 
in  reference  to  its  influence  on  European  commerce  ;  and, 
as  France,  in  its  ambitious  progress,  encroached  upon  the 
German  empire  and  the  Spanish  Netherlands,  the  mercan- 
tile interests  of  England  led  directly  to  an  alliance  with 
Austria  as  the  head  of  the  empire,  and  with  Spain  as  the 
sovereign  of  Belgium. 

Thus  the  commercial  interest  was,  in  European  politics, 
become  paramount;  it  framed  alliances,  regulated  wars, 
dictated  treaties,  and  established  barriers  against  conquest. 

The  discovery  of  America,  and  of  the  ocean-path  to 
India,  had  created  maritime  commerce,  and  the  European 
colonial  system  had  united  the  world.  Now,  for  the  first 
time  in  the  history  of  man,  the  oceans  vindicated  their 
rights  as  natural  highways ;  now,  for  the  first  time,  great 
powers  struggled  for  dominion  on  the  high  seas.  The 
world  entered  on  a  new  epoch. 

Ancient  navigation  kept  near  the  coast,  or  was  but  a 
passage  from  isle  to  isle ;  commerce  now  selected,  of  choice, 
the  boundless  deep. 


292  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXn. 

The  three  ancient  continents  were  divided  by  no  wide 
Beas,  and  their  intercourse  was  chiefly  by  land.  Their 
voyages  were,  like  ours  on  Lake  Erie,  a  continuance  of  in- 
ternal trade  ;  the  vastness  of  their  transactions  was  measured 
not  by  tonnage,  but  by  counting  caravans  and  camels.  But 
now  for  the  wilderness  commerce  substituted  the  sea ;  for 
camels,  merchant-men  ;  for  caravans,  fleets  and  convoys. 

The  ancients  were  restricted  in  the  objects  of  commerce  ; 
for  how  could  rice  be  brought  across  continents  from  the 
Ganges,  or  sugar  from  Bengal  ?  But  now  commerce  gath- 
ered every  production  from  the  east  and  the  west ;  tea, 
sugar,  and  coffee  from  the  plantations  of  China  and  Hin- 
dostan ;  masts  from  American  forests ;  furs  from  Hudson's 
Bay ;  men  from  Africa. 

With  the  expansion  of  commerce,  the  forms  of  business 
were  changing.  Of  old,  no  dealers  in  credit  existed  between 
the  merchant  and  the  producer.  The  Greeks  and  Romans 
were  hard-money  men  ;  their  language  has  no  word  for 
bank-notes  or  currency;  with  them  there  was  no  stock 
market,  no  broker's  board,  no  negotiable  scrip  of  kingdom 
or  commonwealth.  Public  expenses  were  borne  by  direct 
taxes,  or  by  loans  from  rich  citizens,  soon  to  be  cancelled, 
and  never  funded.  The  expansion  of  commerce  gave  birth 
to  immense  masses  of  floating  credits ;  larger  sums  than  the 
whole  revenue  of  an  ancient  state  were  transferred  from 
continent  to  continent  by  bills  of  exchange ;  and,  when  the 
mercantile  system  grew  strong  enough  to  originate  wars, 
it  gained  power  to  subject  national  credit  to  the  floating 
credits  of  commerce. 

Every  commercial  state  of  the  earlier  world  had  been 
but  a  town  with  its  territory ;  the  Phoenician,  Greek,  and 
Italian  republics,  each  was  a  city  government,  retaining  its 
municipal  character  with  the  enlargement  of  its  jurisdiction 
and  the  diffusion  of  its  colonies.  The  great  European  mari- 
time powers  were  vast  monarchies,  grasping  at  continents 
for  their  plantations.  In  the  tropical  isles  of  America  and 
the  east,  they  made  their  gardens  for  the  fruits  of  the  torrid 
zone ;  the  Cordilleras  and  the  Andes  supplied  their  mints 
with  bullion  ;    the    most   inviting  points  on  the  coasts  of 


1484.      PROGRESS  OF  FRANCE  IN  NORTH  AMERICA.         293 

Africa  and  Asia  were  selected  as  commercial  stations  ;  and 
the  temperate  regions  of  America  were  to  be  filled  with 
agriculturists,  whose  swarming  increase  —  such  was  the  uni- 
versal metropolitan  aspiration  —  should  lead  to  the  infinite 
consumption  of  European  goods. 

That  the  mercantile  system  should  be  applied  by  each 
nation  to  its  own  colonies,  was  universally  tolerated  by  the 
political  morality  of  that  day.  Thus  each  metropolis  was 
at  war  with  the  present  interests  and  natural  rights  of  its 
colonies ;  and,  as  the  European  colonial  system  was  estab- 
lished on  every  continent,  as  the  single  colonies  were,  each 
by  itself,  too  feeble  for  resistance,  colonial  oppression  was 
destined  to  endure  as  long,  at  least,  as  the  union  of  the 
oppressors.  But  the  commercial  jealousies  of  Europe  ex- 
tended, from  the  first,  to  European  colonies ;  and  the  home 
relations  of  the  states  of  the  Old  World  to  each  other  were 
finally  surpassed  in  importance  by  the  transatlantic  conflicts 
with  which  they  were  identified.  The  mercantile  system, 
being  founded  in  error  and  injustice,  was  doomed  not  only 
itself  to  expire,  but,  by  overthrowing  the  mighty  fabric  of 
the  colonial  system,  to  emancipate  commerce  and  open  a 
boundless  career  to  human  hope. 

That  colonial  system  all  Western  Europe  had  contributed 
to  build.  Even  before  the  discovery  of  America, 
Portugal  had  reached  Madeira  and  the  Azores,  the  1443; 
Cape  Verde  Islands  and  Congo;  within  six  years  }^; 
after  the  discovery  of  Hayti,  the  intrepid  Vasco  da 
Gama,  following  where  none  but  Africans  from  Carthage 
had  preceded,  turned  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  arrived  at 
Mozambique  and,  passing  the  Arabian  peninsula,  landed  at 
Calicut,  and  made  an  establishment  at  Cochin. 

Within  a  few  years,  the  brilliant  temerity  of  Portugal 
achieved  establishments  on  Western  and  Eastern  Africa, 
in  Arabia  and  Persia,  in  Hindostan  and  the  eastern  isles, 
and  in  Brazil.  The  intense  application  of  the  system  of 
monopoly,  combined  with  the  despotism  of  the  sovereign 
and  the  priesthood,  precipitated  the  decay  of  Portuguese 
commerce  in  advance  of  the  decay  of  the  mercantile  sys- 
tem J  and   the   Moors,  the  Persians,  Holland,  and  Spain, 


294  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIL 

dismantled  Portugal  of  her  possessions  at  so  early  a  period 
that  she  was  never  involved,  as  a  leading  party,  in  the 
wars  of  North  America. 

Far  different  were  the  relations  of  Spain  with  our  colo- 
nial history.  In  the  division  of  the  world  by  Pope  Alex- 
ander YI.  between  Portugal  and  Spain,  the  east  had  been 
allotted  to  the  former;  Spain  therefore  never  reached  the 
Asiatic  world  except  by  travelling  west,  and,  obedient  to 
the  Roman  see,  never  claimed  possession  of  any  territory 
in  Asia  beyond  the  Philippine  Isles.  But  in  America  there 
grew  up  a  Spanish  world  safe  against  conquest  from  its 
boundless  extent,  yet  doubly  momentous  to  our  fathers 
from  its  vicinity  and  its  commercial  system.  Occupying 
Florida  on  our  south,  Spain  was  easily  involved  in  con- 
troversy with  England  on  the  subject  of  reciprocal  terri- 
torial encroachments ;  and,  excluding  foreigners  from  all 
participation  in  her  colonial  trade,  she  could  not  but  arouse 
the  cupidity  of  English  commerce,  bent  on  extending  itself 
by  smuggling,  and,  if  necessary,  by  force.  Yet  the  colo- 
nial maxims,  in  conformity  with  which  Spain  had  spread  its 
hierarchy,  its  missions,  its  garrisons,  and  its  inquisition  over 
islands  and  half  a  continent,  were  adopted  by  England ; 
and  both  powers  were,  by  their  legislation,  pledged  to  the 
system  of  colonial  monopoly. 

Holland  had  risen  into  existence  as  the  advocate  and 
example  of  maritime  freedom,  and  had,  moreover,  been 
ejected  from  the  continent  of  North  America.  Yet,  as  a 
land  power,  it  needed  the  alliance  of  England  as  a  barrier 
against  France ;  and  the  aristocratic  republic,  possessing 
precious  spice  islands  in  the  Indian  Seas,  admitted  to  them 
no  European  flag  but  its  own. 

But  the  two  powers,  of  which  the  ambition  was  most  ac- 
tively interested  in  the  colonial  system,  were  France  and 
England,  both  stern  advocates  of  colonial  exclusiveness,  and 
both  jealous  competitors  for  new  acquisitions. 

The  political  condition  of  France  rendered  her  commer- 
cial advancement  possible.  The  story  of  Louis  XIY.,  on 
coming  of  age,  entering  parliament  with  a  whip  in  his  hand, 
was  invented  as  the  emblem  of  absolute  monarchy.     The 


1667.    PROGRESS   OF  FRANCE  IN  NORTH  AMERICA.       295 

feudal  system,  that  great  antagonist  to  free  industry,  was 
subjected  to  the  crown  ;  and  the  people  of  France  emerged 
into  existence,  one  day  to  assert  their  power.  While  abso- 
lute monarchy  was  the  period  of  transition  from  heredi- 
tary privilege  to  equality;  while  the  memory  of  repub- 
lican virtues  was  kept  alive  by  the  poetry  of  Corneille, 
and  the  vices  of  courts  were  rebuked  in  the  fictions  of 
Fenelon,  —  the  policy  of  France  gave  dignity  to  the  class 
of  citizens.  In  the  magistracy,  as  in  the  church,  they 
could  reach  high  employments ;  the  meanest  burgher  could 
have  audience  of  the  king ;  and  the  members  of  the  royal 
council  were,  almost  without  exception,  selected  from  the 
ignoble.  Colbert  and  Louvois  were  not  of  the  high  no- 
bility. The  great  middling  class  was  constantly  increasing 
in  importance ;  and  the  energies  of  France,  if  not  employed 
in  arms  for  aggrandizement,  began  to  be  husbanded  for 
commerce  and  the  arts. 

Even  before  the  days  of  Colbert,  the  colonial  rivalry 
with  England  had  begun.  When  Queen  Elizabeth  gave  a 
charter  to  a  first  not  very  successful  English  East  India 
company,  France,  under  Richelieu,  struggled  also,  though 
vainly,  to  share  the  great  commerce  with  Asia.  The  same 
year  in  which  England  took  possession  of  Barbados,  French- 
men occupied  the  half  of  St.  Christopher's.  Did  England 
add  half  St.  Christopher's,  Nevis,  and  at  last  Jamaica,  France 
gained  Martinique  and  Guadaloupe,  with  smaller  islets, 
founded  a  colony  at  Cayenne,  and,  by  the  aid  of  bucca- 
neers, took  possession  of  the  west  of  Hayti.  England,  by  its 
devices  of  tariffs  and  prohibitions  and  by  the  royal  assent 
to  the  act  of  navigation,  sought  to  call  into  action  every 
power  of  production,  hardly  a  year  before  Colbert 
hoped  in  like  manner  by  artificial  legislation  to  fos-  ^l^^^° 
ter  the  manufactures  and  finances  of  France,  and 
insure  to  that  kingdom  spacious  seaports,  canals,  colonies, 
and  a  navy.  The  English  East  India  company  had  but 
just  revived  under  Charles  II.,  when  France  gave  priv- 
ileges to  an  East  India  commercial  corporation  ;  and,  if 
the  folly  of  that  corporation  in  planting  on  the  Island  of 
Madagascar,  where  there  was  nothing  to  sell  or  to  buy, 


296  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXH. 

effected  its  decline,  still  the  banner  of  the  Bourbons 
1675.  reached  Malabar  and  Coromandel.  The  fourth  Afri- 
1674.  can  company,  with  the  Stuarts  for  stockholders  and 
1679.       the  slave-trade  for  its  object,  soon  found  a  rival  in 

the  Senegal  company ;  and,  just  at  the  time  when  the 

French  king  was  most  zealous  for  the  conversion 
1685.       of  the  Huguenots,  he  established  a  Guinea  company 

to  trade  from  Sierra  Leone  to  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope.  France  was,  through  Colbert  and  Seignelay,  be- 
come a  great  naval  power,  and  had  given  her  colonial  sys- 
tem an  extent  even  vaster  than  that  of  the  British.  So 
eager  was  she  in  her  rivalry  on  the  ocean,  so  menacing 
was  the  competition  of  her  workshops  in  every  article  of 
ingenious  manufacture,  that  the  spirit  of  monopoly  set  its 
brand  upon  language,  and  England  and  France  were  called 
natural  enemies. 

Memory  fostered  the  national  antipathy;  France  had 
not  forgotten  English  invasions  of  her  soil,  English  victo- 
ries over  her  sons. 

France  adhered  to  the  old  religion,  and  the  revocation  of 
the  edict  of  Nantes  made  it  a  Catholic  empire ;  England 
succeeded  in  a  Protestant  revolution,  which  made  political 
power  a  monopoly  of  the  Anglican  church,  disfranchised 
all  Catholics,  and  even  subjected  them,  in  Ireland,  to  a 
legal  despotism. 

In  England,  freedom  of  mind  made  its  way  through 
a  series  of  aristocratic  and  plebeian  sects,  each  of  which 
found  its  support  in  the  Bible ;  and  the  progress  was  so 
gradual,  and  under  such  variety  of  forms,  both  among  the 
people  and  among  philosophers,  that  the  civil  institutions 
were  not  endangered,  even  when  freedom  degenerated  into 
skepticism  or  infidelity.  In  France,  reason  was  emancipated 
by  philosophy,  and  making  its  way,  at  one  bound,  to  abso- 
lute skepticism,  rejected  every  prejudice,  and  menaced  the 
institutions  of  church  and  of  state. 

In  England,  philosophy  existed  as  an  empirical  science ; 
men  measured  and  weighed  the  outward  world,  and  con- 
structed the  prevailing  systems  of  morals  and  metaphysics 
on  observation  and  the  senses.     In  France,  the  philosophic 


1622.    PROGRESS   OF  FRANCE  IN  NORTH  AMERICA.       297 

mind,  under  the  guidance  of  Descartes,  of  Fenelon,  of 
Malebranche,  assumed  a  character  alike  spiritual  and  uni- 
versal. 

Still  more  opposite  were  the  governments.  In  France, 
feudal  monarchy  had  been  quelled  by  a  military  monarchy ; 
in  England,  it  had  yielded  to  a  parliamentary  monarchy,  in 
which  government  rested  on  property.  France  sustained 
the  principle  of  legitimacy ;  England  had  selected  its  own 
sovereign,  and  to  dispute  his  claims  involved  not  only  a 
question  of  national  law,  but  of  English  independence. 

To  these  causes  of  animosity,  springing  from  rivalry  in 
manufactures  and  in  commercial  stations,  from  contrasts 
in  religion,  philosophy,  opinion,  and  government,  there  was 
added  a  struggle  for  territory  in  North  America.  Not  only 
in  the  West  Indies,  in  the  East  Indies,  in  Africa,  were 
France  and  England  neighbors,  over  far  the  largest  part 
of  our  country  Louis  XIV.  claimed  to  be  the  sovereign ; 
and  the  prelude  to  the  overthrow  of  the  European  colonial 
system,  which  was  sure  to  be  the  overthrow  of  the  mer- 
cantile system,  was  destined  to  be  the  mighty  struggle  for 
the  central  regions  of  our  republic. 

The  first  permanent  efforts  of  French  enterprise,  in  col- 
onizing America,  preceded  any  permanent  English  settle- 
ment north  of  the  Potomac.  Years  before  the  pilgrims 
anchored  within  Cape  Cod,  the  Roman  church  had  been 
planted,  by  missionaries  from  France,  in  the  eastern 
moiety  of  Maine  ;  Le  Caron,  an  unambitious  Fran-  Jgjg* 
ciscan,  the  companion  of  Champlain,  had  passed  into 
the  hunting-grounds  of  the  Wyandots,  and,  bound  by  his 
vows  to  the  life  of  a  beggar,  had,  on  foot  or  paddling  a 
bark  canoe,  gone  onward  and  still  onward,  taking  alms  of 
the  savages,  till  he  reached  the  rivers  of  Lake  Huron. 

While  Quebec  contained  scarce  fifty  inhabitants,       1^23. 
priests  of  the  Franciscan  order  —  Le   Caron,   Viel,       ^^^^* 
Sagard  —  had  labored  for  years  as  missionaries  in       i626. 
Upper  Canada,  or  made  their  way  to  the  neutral 
Huron  tribe  that  dwelt  on  the  waters  of  the  Niagara. 

After  the  Canada  company  had  been  suppressed,  I622. 
and  the  Calvinists,  William  and  Enieric  Caen,  had  for 


298  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIL 

five  years,  enjoyed  its  immunities,  the  hundred  asso- 
1627.       ciates,  —  Richelieu,  Champlain,  Razilly,  and  opulent 
merchants,  being  of  the  number,  —  by  a  charter  from 
Louis  XIII.,  obtained  a  grant  of  New  France,  and, 
1632.       after  the  restoration  of  Quebec  by  its  English  con- 
querors, entered  upon  the  government  of  their  prov- 
ince.    Its  limits  embraced  specifically  the  basin  of  the  St. 
Lawrence,  and  of  such  other  rivers  in  New  France  as  flowed 
directly  into  the  sea;  they  included  Florida,  or  the  country 
south  of  Virginia,  esteemed  a  French  province  in  virtue  of 
the  unsuccessful  efforts  of  Coligny. 

Religious  zeal,  not  less  than  commercial  ambition,  had 
influenced  France  to  recover  Canada;  and  Cham- 
1635!  plain,  its  governor,  ever  disinterested  and  compas- 
sionate, full  of  honor  and  probity,  of  ardent  devotion 
and  burning  zeal,  esteemed  "  the  salvation  of  a  soul  worth 
more  than  the  conquest  of  an  empire."  The  commercial 
monopoly  of  a  privileged  company  could  not  foster  a  col- 
ony ;  the  climate  of  the  country  round  Quebec,  "  where 
summer  hurries  through  the  sky,"  did  not  invite  to  agricul- 
ture ;  no  persecutions  of  Catholics  swelled  the  stream  of 
emigration ;  and,  at  first,  there  was  little,  except  religious 
enthusiasm,  to  give  vitality  to  the  province.  Touched  by 
the  simplicity  of  the  order  of  St.  Francis,  Champlain  had 
selected  its  priests  of  the  contemplative  class  for  his  com- 
panions; "for  they  were  free  from  ambition."  But  the 
aspiring  honor  of  the  Galilean  church  was  interested ;  a 
prouder  sympathy  was  awakened  among  the  devo- 
1632.  tees  at  court;  and  the  Franciscans  having,  as  a  men- 
dicant order,  been  excluded  from  the  rocks  and 
deserts  of  the  New  World,  the  office  of  converting  the 
heathen  of  Canada,  and  thus  enlarging  the  borders  of 
French  dominion,  was  intrusted  solely  to  the  Jesuits. 

The  establishment  of  "  the  Society  of  Jesus  "  by  Loyola 

had  been  contemporary  with  the  Reformation,  of  which  it 

was  designed  to  arrest  the  progress  ;   and  its  com- 

i54o'.       plete  organization  belongs  to  the  period  when  the  first 

full  edition  of  Calvin's  Institutes  saw  the  light.     Its 

members  were,  by  its  rules,  never  to  become  prelates,  and 


1632.    PROGRESS  OF  FRANCE  IN  NORTH  AMERICA.       299 

could  gain  power  and  distinction  only  by  influence  over 
mind.  Their  vows  were  poverty,  chastity,  absolute  obedi- 
ence, and  a  constant  readiness  to  go  on  missions  against 
heresy  or  heathenism.  Their  colleges  became  the  best 
schools  in  the  world.  Emancipated  in  a  great  degree  from 
the  cloistral  forms,  separated  from  domestic  ties,  constitut- 
ing a  community  essentially  intellectual  as  well  as  essen- 
tially plebeian,  bound  together  by  the  most  perfect  organ- 
ization, and  having  for  their  end  a  control  over  opinion 
among  the  scholars  and  courts  of  Europe  and  throughout 
the  habitable  globe,  the  order  of  the  Jesuits  held,  as  its 
ruling  maxims,  the  widest  diffusion  of  its  influence  and 
the  closest  internal  unity.  Immediately  on  its  institution, 
their  missionaries,  kindling  with  a  heroism  that  defied 
every  danger  and  endured  every  toil,  made  their  way  to 
the  ends  of  the  earth ;  they  raised  the  emblem  of  man's 
salvation  on  the  Moluccas,  in  Japan,  in  India,  in  Thibet, 
in  Cochin  China,  and  in  China ;  they  penetrated  Ethiopia, 
and  reached  the  Abyssinians ;  they  planted  missions  among 
the  Kaffres ;  in  California,  on  the  banks  of  the  Maraiihon, 
in  the  plains  of  Paraguay,  they  invited  barbarians  to  the 
civilization  of  Christianity. 

Champlain  could  devise  no  method  of  building  up  i632. 
the  dominion  of  France  in  Canada  but  an  alliance 
with  the  Hurons,  or  of  confirming  that  alliance  but  the 
establishment  of  missions.  Such  a  policy  was  congenial  to 
a  church  which  cherishes  every  member  of  the  human  race, 
without  regard  to  lineage  or  skin.  It  was,  moreover,  fa- 
vored by  the  conditions  of  the  charter  itself,  which  recog- 
nised the  neophyte  among  the  savages  as  an  enfranchised 
citizen  of  France. 

Thus  it  was  neither  commercial  enterprise  nor  royal 
ambition  which  carried  the  power  of  France  into  the  heart 
of  our  continent :  the  motive  was  religion.  Religious  en- 
thusiasm colonized  New  England ;  and  religious  enthusiasm 
founded  Montreal,  made  a  conquest  of  the  wilderness  on 
the  upper  lakes,  and  explored  the  Mississippi.  Puritanism 
gave  New  England  its  worship  and  its  schools  ;  the  Roman 
church  created  for  Canada  its  altars,  its  hospitals,  and  its 


300  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIL 

Beminariea.  The  influence  of  Calvin  can  be  traced  in  every 
ISTew  England  village ;  in  Canada,  the  monuments  of  feu- 
dalism and  the  Catholic  Church  stand  side  by  side ;  and  the 
names  of  Montmorenci  and  Bourbon,  of  Levi  and  Conde, 
are  mingled  with  memorials  of  St.  Athanasius  and  Augustin, 
of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  and  Ignatius  Loyola. 

1633.  Within  three  years  after  the  second  occupation  of 
1636.  Canada,  the  number  of  Jesuit  priests  in  the  province 
reached  fifteen ;  and  every  tradition  bears  testimony  to 
their  worth.  They  had  the  faults  of  ascetic  superstition ; 
but  the  horrors  of  a  Canadian  life  in  the  wilderness  were 
resisted  by  an  invincible  passive  courage  and  a  deep  inter- 
nal tranquillity.  Away  from  the  amenities  of  life,  away 
from  the  opportunities  of  vain-glory,  they  became  dead  to 
the  world,  and  possessed  their  souls  in  unalterable  peace. 
The  few  who  lived  to  grow  old,  though  bowed  by  the  toils 
of  a  long  mission,  still  kindled  with  the  fervor  of  apostolic 
zeal.  The  history  of  their  labors  is  connected  with  the  ori- 
gin of  every  celebrated  town  in  the  annals  of  French  Amer- 
ica :  not  a  cape  was  turned,  nor  a  river  entered,  but  a  Jesuit 
led  the  way. 

Behold,  then,  the  Jesuits  Brebeuf  and  Daniel,  soon  to  be 

followed  by  the   gentler   Lallemand,  and  many  others   of 

their  order,  bowing   meekly  in   obedience   to   their 

1634.  vows,  and  joining  a  party  of  barefoot  Huron s,  who 
were  returning  from  Quebec  to  their  country.     The 

journey,  by  way  of  the  Ottawa  and  the  rivers  that  interlock 
with  it,  was  one  of  more  than  three  hundred  leagues,  through 
a  region  horrible  with  forests.  All  day  long  the  missiona- 
ries must  wade,  or  handle  the  oar.  At  night,  there  is  no 
food  for  them  but  a  scanty  measure  of  Indian  corn  mixed 
with  water;  their  couch  is  the  earth  or  the  rocks.  At 
five-and-thirty  waterfalls,  the  canoe  is  to  be  carried  on 
the  shoulders  for  leagues  through  thick  woods  or  over 
roughest  regions ;  fifty  times  it  was  dragged  by  hand 
through  shallows  and  rapids,  over  sharp  stones ;  and  thus 
—  swimming,  wading,  paddling,  or  bearing  the  canoe  across 
the  portages,  with  garments  torn,  with  feet  mangled,  yet 
with  the  breviary  safely  hung  round  the  neck,  and  vows, 


1634.    PROGRESS  OF  FRANCE  IN  NORTH  AMERICA.      301 

as  they  advanced,  to  meet  death  twenty  times  over,  if  it 
were  possible,  for  theiionor  of  St.  Joseph  —  the  consecrated 
envoys  made  their  way,  by  rivers,  lakes,  and  forests,  from 
Quebec  to  the  heart  of  the  Huron  wilderness.  There,  to 
the  north-west  of  Lake  Toronto,  near  the  shore  of  Lake 
Iroquois,  which  is  but  a  bay  of  Lake  Huron,  they 
raised  the  first  humble  house  of  the  Society  of  Jesus  gS" 
among  the  Hurons;  the  cradle,  it  was  said,  of  his 
church  who  dwelt  at  Bethlehem  in  a  cottage.  The  little 
chapel,  built  by  aid  of  the  axe  and  consecrated  to  St.  Joseph, 
where,  in  the  gaze  of  thronging  crowds,  vespers  and  matins 
began  to  be  chanted  and  bread  was  consecrated  by  solemn 
mass,  amazed  the  hereditary  guardians  of  the  council-fires 
of  the  Huron  tribes.  Beautiful  testimony  to  the  equality 
of  the  human  race !  the  sacred  wafer,  emblem  of  the  divin- 
ity in  man,  all  that  the  church  offered  to  the  princes  and 
nobles  of  the  European  world,  was  shared  with  the  humblest 
of  the  savage  neophytes.  The  hunter,  as  he  returned  from 
his  wide  roamings,  was  taught  to  hope  for  eternal  rest ;  the 
braves  as  they  came  from  war,  were  warned  of  the  wrath 
which  kindles  against  sinners  a  never-dying  fire,  fiercer  far 
than  the  fires  of  the  Mohawks ;  the  idlers  of  the  Indian 
villages  were  told  the  exciting  tale  of  the  Saviour's  death 
for  their  redemption.  Two  new  Christian  villages,  St. 
Louis  and  St.  Ignatius,  bloomed  among  the  Huron  forests. 
The  dormant  sentiment  of  pious  veneration  was  awakened 
in  many  breasts,  and  there  came  to  be  even  earnest  and 
ascetic  devotees  uttering  prayers  and  vows  in  the  Huron 
tongue  ;  while  tawny  skeptics  inquired  if  there  were  indeed, 
in  the  centre  of  the  earth,  eternal  flames  for  the  unbe- 
lieving. 

The  missionaries  themselves  possessed  the  weaknesses 
and  the  virtues  of  their  order.  For  fifteen  years  enduring 
the  infinite  labors  and  perils  of  the  Huron  mission,  and 
exhibiting,  as  it  was  said,  "  an  absolute  pattern  of  every 
religious  virtue,"  Jean  de  Brebeuf,  respecting  even  the  nod 
of  his  distant  superiors,  bowed  his  mind  and  his  judgment 
to  obedience.  Besides  the  assiduous  fatigues  of  his  oflice, 
each  day,  and  sometimes  twice  in  the  day,  he  applied  to 


302  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXH. 

himself  the  lash  ;  beneath  a  bristling  hair-shirt  he  wore  an 
iron  girdle,  armed  on  all  sides  with  projecting  points ;  his 
fasts  were  frequent ;  almost  always  his  pious  vigils  con- 
tinued deep  into  the  night.  In  vain  did  Asmodeus  assume 
for  him  the  forms  of  earthly  beauty  ;  his  eye  rested  benig- 
nantly  on  visions  of  divine  things.  Once,  imparadised  in  a 
trance,  he  beheld  the  Mother  of  Him  whose  cross  he  bore, 

surrounded  by  a  crowd  of  virgins,  in  the  beatitudes 
1640.       of  heaven.     Once,  as  he  himself  has  recorded,  while 

engaged  in  penance,  he  saw  Christ  unfold  his  arms  to 
embrace  him,  promising  oblivion  of  his  sins.  Once,  late  at 
night,  while  praying  in  the  silence,  he  had  a  vision  of  an 
infinite  number  of  crosses,  and  with  mighty  heart  he  strove 
again  and  again  to  grasp  them  all.  Often  he  saw  the  shapes 
of  foul  fiends,  now  appearing  as  madmen,  now  as  raging 
beasts  ;  and  often  he  beheld  the  image  of  Death,  a  blood- 
less form,  by  the  side  of  the  stake,  struggling  with  bonds, 

and  at  last  falling,  as  a  harruless  spectre,  at  his  feet. 
1638.       Having  vowed  to  seek  out  suffering  for  the  greater 

glory  of  God,  he  renewed  that  vow  every  day,  at  the 
moment  of  tasting  the  sacred  wafer ;  and,  as  his  cupidity 
for  martyrdom  grew  into  a  passion,  he  exclaimed  :  "  What 
shall  I  render  to  thee,  Jesus,  my  Lord,  for  all  thy  benefits  ? 
I  will  accept  thy  cup,  and  invoke  thy  name ;  "  and,  in  sight 
of  the  Eternal  Father  and  the  Holy  Spirit,  of  the  most  holy 
Mother  of  Christ  and  St.  Joseph,  before  angels,  apostles, 
and  martyrs,  before  St.  Ignatius  and  Francis  Xavier,  he 
made  a  vow  never  to  decline  the  opportunity  of  martyrdom, 
and  never  to  receive  the  death-blow  but  with  joy. 

The  life  of  a  missionary  on  Lake  Huron  was  simple  and 
uniform.  The  earliest  hours,  from  four  to  eight,  were  ab- 
sorbed in  private  prayer;  the  day  was  given  to  schools, 
visits,  instruction  in  the  catechism,  and  a  service  for  prose- 
lytes. Sometimes,  after  the  manner  of  St.  Francis  Xavier, 
Brebeuf  would  walk  through  the  village  and  its  environs, 
ringing  a  little  bell,  and  inviting  the  Huron  braves  and 
counsellors  to  a  conference.  There,  under  the  shady  forest, 
the  most  solemn  mysteries  of  the  Catholic  faith  were  sub- 
jected to  discussion.     It  was  by  such  means  that  the  senti- 


1635.    PROGRESS  OF  FRANCE  IN  NORTH  AMERICA.       303 

ment  of  piety  was  unfolded  in  the  breast  of  the  great 
warrior  Ahasistari.  Nature  had  planted  in  his  mind  the 
seeds  of  religious  faith  :  "  Before  you  came  to  this  country," 
he  would  say,  "  when  I  have  incurred  the  greatest  perils, 
and  have  alone  escaped,  I  have  said  to  myself,  *■  Some  pow- 
erful spirit  has  the  guardianship  of  my  days  ; ' "  and  he 
professed  his  belief  in  Jesus,  as  the  good  genius  and  pro- 
tector, whom  he  had  before  unconsciously  adored.  After 
trials  of  his  sincerity,  he  was  baptized ;  and,  enlisting  a 
troop  of  converts,  savages  like  himself,  "  Let  us  strive,"  he 
exclaimed,  "  to  make  the  whole  world  embrace  the  faith  in 
Jesus." 

As  missionary  stations  multiplied,  the  central  spot       i639. 
was  named  St.  Mary's,  upon  the  banks  of  the  river 
now  called  Wye.     There,  at  the  humble  house  dedicated  to 
the  Virgin,  in  one  year  three  thousand  guests   froni  the 
cabins  of  the  red  man  received  a  frugal  welcome. 

The  news  from  this  Huron  Christendom  awakened  in 
France  the  strongest  sympathy ;  religious  communities,  in 
Paris  and  in  the  provinces,  joined  in  prayers  for  its  ad- 
vancement; the  king  sent  magnificently  embroidered  gar- 
ments as  presents  to  the  neophytes ;  the  queen,  the  prin- 
cesses of  the  blood,  the  clergy  of  France,  even  Italy, 
listened  with  interest  to  the  novel  tale ;  and  the  pope  him- 
self expressed  his  favor.  To  confirm  the  missions,  the  first 
measure  was  the  establishment  of  a  college  in  New  France ; 
and  the  parents  of  the  Marquis  de  Gamache,  pleased  with 
his  pious  importunity,  assented  to  his  entering  the  order 
of  the  Jesuits,  and  added  from  their  ample  fortunes  the 
means  of  endowing  a  seminary  for  education  at  Quebec. 
Its  foundation  was  laid,  under  happy  auspices,  in 
1635,  just  before  Champlain  passed  from  among  the  i635. 
living,  two  years  before  the  emigration  of  John 
Harvard,  and  one  year  before  the  general  court  of  Massa- 
chusetts had  made  provision  for  a  college. 

The  fires  of  charity  were  at  the  same  time  kindled.  The 
Duchess  d'Aiguillon,  aided  by  her  uncle,  the  Cardinal  Riche- 
lieu, endowed  a  public  hospital,  dedicated  to  the  Son  of 
God,  whose  blood  was  shed  in  mercy  for  all  mankind.    Its 


804  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXH. 

doors  were  open,  not  only  to  the  sufferers  among  the  emi- 
grants, but  to  the  maimed,  the  sick,  and  the  blind  of  any  of 
the  numerous  tribes  between  the  Kennebec  and  Lake  Supe- 
rior; it  received  misfortune  without  asking  its  lineage. 
From  the  hospital  nuns  of  Dieppe,  three  were  selected,  the 
youngest  but  twenty-two,  the  eldest  but  twenty-nine,  to 
brave  the  famine  and  the  rigors  of  Canada  in  their  patient 
missions  of  benevolence. 

The  same  religious  enthusiasm,  inspiring  Madame  de  la 
Peltrie,  a  young  and  opulent  widow  of  Alen9on,  with 
A^u?i.  ^^^  ^^^  ^^  ^  ^^^  from  Dieppe  and  two  others  from 
Tours,  established  the  Ursuline  convent  for  the  edu- 
cation of  girls.  As  the  youthful  heroines  stepped  on  shore 
at  Quebec,  they  stooped  to  kiss  the  earth  which  they  adopted 
as  their  country,  and  were  ready,  in  case  of  need,  to  tinge 
with  their  blood.  The  governor,  with  the  little  garrison, 
received  them  at  the  water's  edge  ;  Hurons  and  Algonkins, 
joining  in  the  shouts,  filled  the  air  with  yells  of  joy;  and 
the  motley  group  escorted  the  new  comers  to  the  church, 
where,  amidst  a  general  thanksgiving,  the  Te  Deum  was 
chanted.  Is  it  wonderful  that  the  natives  were  touched  by 
a  benevolence  which  their  poverty  and  squalid  misery  could 
not  appall  ?  Their  education  was  also  attempted ;  and  the 
venerable  ash-tree  still  lives,  beneath  which  Mary  of  the 
Incarnation  toiled,  though  in  vain,  for  the  culture  of  the  red 
man's  children. 

Meantime,  a  colony  of  Algonkins  had  been  estab- 
lished in  the  vicinity  of  Quebec;  and  the  name  of 
Silleri  is  the  monument  to  the  philanthropy  of  its  projector. 
Here  savages  were  to  be  trained  to  the  faith  and  the  man- 
ners of  civilization. 

Of  Montreal,  selected  to  be  a  nearer  rendezvous  for 

1640.  converted  Indians,  possession  was  taken,  in  1640,  by 
a  solemn  mass,  celebrated  beneath  a  tent.     In  the 

1641.  following  February,  in  France,  at  the  cathedral   of 
Our  Lady  of  Paris,  a  general  supplication  was  made 

that  the  Queen  of  Angels  would  take  the  Island  of  Montreal 
under  her  protection.  In  August  of  the  same  year,  in  the 
presence  of  the  French  gathered  from  all  parts  of  Canada, 


1639.    PROGRESS  OF  FRANCE  IN  NORTH  AMERICA.       305 

and  of  the  native  warriors  summoned  from  the  wilderness, 
the  festival  of  the  assumption  was  solemnized  on  the  island 
itself.  Henceforward,  the  hearth  of  the  sacred  fires  of  the 
Wyandots  was  consecrated  to  the  Virgin.  "There  the 
Mohawk  and  the  feebler  Algonkin,"  said  Le  Jeune,  "  shall 
make  their  home ;  the  wolf  shall  dwell  with  the  lamb,  and 
a  little  child  shall  guide  them." 

The   occupation  of   Montreal   did  not  immediately  pro- 
duce nearer  relations  with   the  Huron  missionaries, 
who,  for  a  period  of  three  years,  received  no  supplies    ^Hl^^ 
whatever :  so  that  their  clothes  fell  in  pieces ;  they 
had  no  wine  for  the  chalice  but  the  juices  of  the  wild  grape, 
and  scarce  bread  enough  for  consecration.     Yet  the  efforts 
of  the  Jesuits  were  not  limited   to  the  Huron  na- 
tion.    Within  thirteen  years,  this  remote  wilderness    ^1^7^ 
was  visited  by  forty-two   missionaries,  members    of 
the  Society  of  Jesus,  besides  eighteen  others,  who,  if  not 
initiated,  were  yet  chosen  men,  ready  to  shed  their  blood 
for  their  faith.     Twice  or  thrice  a  year,  they  all  assembled 
at  St.  Mary's ;  for  the  rest  of  the  time,  they  were  scattered 
through  the  infidel  tribes. 

I  would  willingly  follow  their  progress,  as  they  gradually 
surveyed  the  coast  of  our  republic,  from  the  waters  of  the 
Niagara  to  the  head  of  Lake  Superior ;  but  their  narratives 
do  but  incidentally  blend  description  with  their  details  of 
conversions.  Yet  the  map  which  was  prepared  by  the  order, 
at  Paris,  in  1660,  proves  that,  in  this  earliest  period,  they  had 
traced  the  highway  of  waters  from  Lake  Erie  to  Lake  Supe- 
rior, and  had  gained  a  glimpse,  at  least,  of  Lake  Michigan. 

Within  six  years  after  the  recovery  of  Canada,  the  lesg. 
plan  was  formed  of  establishing  missions,  not  only  ^^^^" 
among  the  Algonkins  in  the  north,  but  south  of  Lake 
Huron,  in  Michigan,  and  at  Green  Bay ;  thus  to  gain  access 
to  the  immense  regions  of  the  west  and  the  north-west,  to 
the  great  multitude  from  all  nations,  whom  no  one  can 
number.  But  the  Jesuits  were  too  feeble  and  too  few  to 
attempt  the  spiritual  conquest  of  so  many  countries :  they 
prayed  for  recruits  ;  they  invoked  the  blessing  of  the  Divine 
Majesty  on  their  thoughts  and  enterprises. 
VOL.  n.  20 


806  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXH. 

At  the  various  missions,  Indians  from  the  remotest  points 
appeared.  In  1638,  there  came  to  the  Huron  mission  a 
chief  of  the  Huron  tribe  that  dwelt  on  the  head-waters  of 
the  Ohio ;  and  we  find  constant  mention  of  Algonkins  from 
the  west,  especially  from  Green  Bay. 

In  the  autumn  of  1640,  Charles  Raymbault  and  Claude 
Pijart  reached  the  Huron  missions,  destined  for  service 
among  the  Algonkins  of  the  north  and  the  west.  By 
continual  warfare  with  the  Mohawks,  the  French  had  been 
excluded  from  the  navigation  of  Lake  Ontario,  and  had 
never  even  launched  a  canoe  on  Lake  Erie.  Their  avenue 
to  the  west  was  by  way  of  the  Ottawa  and  French  River ; 
so  that  the  whole  coast  of  Ohio  and  Southern  Michigan 
remained  unknown,  except  as  seen  by  missionaries  from 
their  stations  in  Canada.  In  1640,  Brebeuf  had  been  sent 
to  the  villages  of  the  neutral  nation  which  occupied  the 
territory  on  the  Niagara.  Of  these,  some  villages  were  ex- 
tended on  the  southern  shore  of  Lake  Erie,  beyond  Buf- 
falo; but  it  is  not  certain  that  Brebeuf  visited  them,  or 
that  he  was  at  any  time  on  the  soil  of  our  republic.  His 
mission  perfected  the  knowledge  of  the  great  watercourse 
of  the  valley  of  the  St.  Lawrence.  "  Could  we  but  gain  the 
mastery,"  it  was  said,  "  of  the  shore  of  Ontario  on  the  side 
nearest  the  abode  of  the  Iroquois,  we  could  ascend  by  the 
St.  Lawrence,  without  danger,  and  pass  free  beyond  Niag- 
ara, with  a  great  saving  of  time  and  pains."  Thus  did 
Jesuits  see  the  necessity  of  possessing  a  post  in  Western 
New  York,  seven  years  after  the  restoration  of  Quebec. 
At  this  time,  no  Englishman  had  reached  the  basin  of  the 
St.  Lawrence.  The  country  on  the  sea  was  held  by  the 
Dutch ;  that  part  of  New  York  which  is  watered  by  streams 
that  flow  to  the  St.  Lawrence  was  first  visited  by  the 
French. 

But  the  fixed  hostility  and  the  power  of  the  Five  Nations 
left  no  hope  of  success  in  gaining  safe  intercourse  by  the 
St.  Lawrence.  To  preserve  the  avenue  to  the  west  by  the 
Ottawa,  Pijart  and  Charles  Raymbault,  in  1640,  on  their 
pilgrimage  to  the  Huron  country,  attempted  the  conver- 
sion of  the  roving  tribes  that  were  masters  of  the  high- 


1641.    PROGRESS  OF  FRANCE  IN  NORTH  AMERICA.       307 

ways ;  and,  in  the  following  year,  they  roamed  as     ig4i_ 
missionaries  with  the  Algonkins  of   Lake  Nipising.       ^*y  ^• 

Towards  the  close  of  summer,  these  wandering  tribes 
prepared  to  celebrate  "  their  festival  of  the  dead,"  —  to 
gather  up  the  bones  of  their  deceased  friends,  and  give 
them  jointly  an  honorable  sepulchre.  To  this  ceremony 
all  the  confederate  nations  were  invited  ;  as  they 
approach  the  shore,  on  a  deep  bay  in  Lake  Iro-  Sept. 
quois,  their  canoes  advance  in  regular  array,  and 
the  representatives  of  nations  leap  on  shore,  uttering  ex- 
clamations and  cries  of  joy,  which  the  rocks  echo.  The 
long  cabin  for  the  dead  had  been  prepared  ;  their  bones 
are  nicely  disposed  in  coffins  of  bark,  and  wrapped  in  such 
furs  as  the  wealth  of  Europe  would  have  coveted ;  the 
mourning-song  of  the  war-chiefs  had  been  chanted,  all  night 
long,  to  the  responsive  wails  of  the  women.  The  farewell 
to  the  dead,  the  dances,  the  councils,  the  presents,  all  were 
finished.  But,  before  the  assembly  dispersed,  the  Jesuits, 
by  their  presents  and  their  festivals,  had  won  new  aif ection, 
and  an  invitation  was  given  to  visit  the  nation  of  Chip- 
pewas  at  Sault  Ste.  Marie. 

For  the  leader  of  this  first  invasion  of  the  soil  of  our 
republic  in  the  west,  Charles  Raymbault  was  selected  ;  and, 
as  Hurons  were  his  attendants,  Isaac  Jogues  was  given  him 
as  a  companion. 

It  was   on   the   seventeenth    day   of    September,       i64i. 
1641,  that  the  birch-bark  canoe,  freighted  with  the  . 
first   envoys  from  Christendom,  left  the  Bay  of  Penetan- 
gushene  for  the  Falls  of  St.  Mary.     Passing  to  the  north, 
they  floated  over  a  wonted  track  till  beyond  the  French 
River ;  then  they  passed  onward  over  the  clear  waters  and 
between  the  clustering  archipelagoes  of  Lake  Huron,  be- 
yond the  Manitoulins  and  other  isles  along  the  shore,  to 
the   straits  that  form  the  outlet  of  Lake  Superior. 
There,  at  the  falls,  after  a  navigation  of  seventeen     Oct.  4. 
days,    they   found    an    assembly   of    two    thousand 
souls.     They  made  inquiries  respecting  many  nations,  who, 
had  never  known  Europeans,  and  had  never  heard  of  the 
one   God.     Among   other  nations,   they  were  told  of  the 


308  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIL 

Nadowessies,  the  famed  Sioux,  who  dwelt  eighteen  days' 
journey  farther  to  the  west,  beyond  the  Great  Lake,  then 
still  without  a  name ;  warlike  tribes,  with  fixed  abodes, 
cultivators  of  maize  and  tobacco,  of  an  unknown  race  and 
language.  The  religious  zeal  of  the  French  bore  the  cross 
to  the  banks  of  the  St.  Mary  and  the  confines  of  Lake 
Superior,  and  looked  wistfully  towards  the  homes  of  the 
Sioux  in  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi,  fiv^e  years  before  the 
New  England  Eliot  had  addressed  the  tribe  of  Indians  that 
dwelt  within  six  miles  of  Boston  harbor. 

The  chieftains  of  the  Chippewas  invited  the  Jesuits  to 
dwell  among  them,  and  hopes  were  inspired  of  a  permanent 
mission.  A  council  was  held.  "  We  will  embrace  you,"  said 
they,  "  as  brothers ;  we  will  derive  profit  from  your  words." 
After  finishing  this  excursion,  Raymbault  designed  to 
rejoin  the  Algonkins  of  Nipising,  but  the  climate  forbade ; 
and,  late  in  the  season,  he  returned  to  the  harbor  of  the 
Huron  missions,  wasting  away  with  consumption.  In  mid- 
summer of  the  next  year,  he  descended  to  Que- 
00^22  ^^^'  -^t^^  languishing  till  October,  the  self-denying 
man,  who  had  glowed  with  the  hope  of  bearing  the 
gospel  across  the  continent,  through  all  the  American  Bar- 
bary,  even  to  the  ocean  that  divides  America  from  China, 
ceased  to  live ;  and  the  body  of  this  first  apostle  of  Chris- 
tianity to  the  tribes  of  Michigan  was  buried  in  "  the  par- 
ticular sepulchre,"  which  the  justice  of  that  age  had 
"  erected  expressly  to  honor  the  memory  of  the  illustrious  " 
Cham  plain. 

Thus  the  climate  made  one  martyr :  the  companion  of 
Raymbault  was  destined  to  encounter  a  far  more  dreaded 
foe.     The    war-parties  of  the  Five  Nations,  hereditary  en- 
emies of   the    Hurons,    and   the    deadly  opponents    of  the 
French,  controlled  the  passes  between  Upper  Canada  and 
Quebec ;  and  each  missionary  on  his  pilgrimage  was 
1642.       in  danger  of  captivity.     Such  was  the  fate  of  Isaac 
Jogues,  who,  having  been  one  of  the  first  to  carry 
the  cross  into  Michigan,  was  now  the  first  to  bear  it  through 
jg42     the  villages  of  the  Mohawks.     From  the  Falls  of  St. 
June  13.  Mary  he  had  repaired  to  the  Huron  missions,  and 


1642.    PROGRESS   OF  FRANCE   IN  NORTH  AMERICA.       309 

thence,  with  the  escort  of  Ahasistari  and  other  Huron 
braves,  he  descended  by  the  Ottawa  and  St.  Law- 
rence to  Quebec.  On  his  return  with  a  larger  fleet  ^ug^'i. 
of  canoes,  a  band  of  Mohawks,  whose  war-parties, 
fearlessly  strolling  through  the  illimitable  forest,  were  ever 
ready  to  burst  suddenly  upon  their  foes,  lay  in  wait  for  the 
pilgrims,  as  they  ascended  the  St.  Lawrence.  "  There  can 
be  but  three  canoes  of  them,"  said  Ahasistari,  as,  at  day- 
break, he  examined  their  trail  on  the  shore :  "  there  is 
nothing  to  fear,"  added  this  bravest  of  the  braves.  Un- 
happy confidence !  The  Mohawks,  from  their  ambush,  at- 
tacked the  canoes,  as  they  neared  the  land :  the  thin  bark 
is  perforated ;  Hurons  and  Frenchmen  alike  make  for  the 
shore,  to  find  security  in  the  thick  forests.  Jogues  might 
have  escaped ;  but  there  were  with  him  converts,  who  had 
not  yet  been  baptized ;  and  when  did  a  Jesuit  missionary 
seek  to  save  his  own  life,  at  what  he  believed  the  risk  of 
a  soul  ?  Ahasistari  had  gained  a  hiding-place :  observing 
Jogues  to  be  a  captive,  he  returned  to  him,  saying  :  "  My 
brother,  I  made  oath  to  thee  that  I  would  share  thy  fortune, 
whether  death  or  life ;  here  am  I  to  keep  my  vow." 

The  horrible  inflictions  of  savage  cruelty  ensued,  and 
were  continued  all  the  way  from  the  St.  Lawrence  to  the 
Mohawk.  There  they  arrived  the  evening  before  the  fes- 
tival of  the  assumption  of  the  Virgin ;  and,  as  he  ran  the 
gauntlet,  Jogues  comforted  himself  with  a  vision  of  the 
glory  of  the  queen  of  heaven.  In  a  second  and  a  third  vil- 
lage, the  same  sufferings  were  encountered ;  for  days  and 
nights  he  was  abandoned  to  hunger  and  every  torment 
which  petulant  youth  could  devise.  But  yet  there  was  con- 
solation :  an  ear  of  Indian  corn  on  the  stalk  was  thrown  to 
the  good  father ;  and  see !  to  the  broad  blade  there  clung 
drops  of  water  or  of  dew,  enough  to  baptize  two  captive 
neophytes. 

Three  Hurons  were  condemned  to  the  flames.  The  brave 
Ahasistari,  having  received  absolution,  met  his  end  with  the 
enthusiasm  of  a  convert  and  the  pride  of  the  most  gallant 
war-chief  of  his  tribe. 

Sad  was  the  fate  of  the  captive  novice,  Ren6  Goupil.    He 


310  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIL 

had  been  seen  to  make  the  sign  of  the  cross  on  an 
si^ig.  infant's  brow.     "  He  will  destroy  the  village  by  his 

charms,"  said  his  master ;  and,  summoned  while  re- 
citing alternately  with  Jogues  the  rosary  of  the  Virgin,  a 
blow  with  the  tomahawk  laid  him  lifeless. 

Father  Jogues  had  expected  the  same  fate ;  but  his  life 
was  spared,  and  his  liberty  enlarged.  On  a  hill  apart,  he 
carved  a  long  cross  on  a  tree,  and  there,  in  the  solitude, 
meditated  the  imitation  of  Christ,  and  soothed  his  griefs  by 
reflecting  that  he  alone,  in  that  vast  region,  adored  the  true 
God  of  earth  and  heaven.  Roaming  through  the  stately 
forests  of  the  Mohawk  Valley,  he  wrote  the  name  of  Jesus 
on  the  bark  of  trees,  graved  the  cross,  and  entered  into 
possession  of  these  countries  in  the  name  of  God;  often 
lifting  up  his  voice  in  a  solitary  chant.  Thus  did  France 
bring  its  banner  and  its  faith  to  the  confines  of  Albany. 
The  missionary  himself  was  humanely  ransomed  from  cap- 
tivity by  the  Dutch,  and,  sailing  for  France,  soon  returned 
to  Canada. 

1644.  Similar  was  the  fate  of  Father  Bressani.  Taken 
^*y-  prisoner  while  on  his  way  to  the  Hurons ;  beaten, 
mangled,  mutilated;  driven  barefoot  over  rough  paths, 
through  briers  and  thickets ;  scourged  by  a  whole  village ; 
burned,  tortured,  wounded,  and  scarred,  —  he  was  eyewit- 
ness to  the  fate  of  one  of  his  companions,  who  was  boiled 
and  eaten.  Yet  some  mysterious  awe  protected  his  life; 
and  he,  too,  was  at  last  humanely  rescued  by  the  Dutch. 

Meantime,  to   make   good  the  possession  of   the 

1645.  country,  a  treaty  of  peace  is  sought  by  the  French 
with  the  Five  Nations,  and  at  Three  Rivers  a  great 

meeting  is  held.  There  are  the  French  officers  in  their 
magnificence ;  there  the  five  Iroquois  deputies,  couched 
upon  mats,  bearing  strings  of  wampum.  It  was  agreed  to 
smooth  the  forest  path,  to  calm  the  river,  to  hide  the  toma- 
hawk. "Let  the  clouds  be  dispersed,"  said  the  Iroquois; 
"let  the  sun  shine  on  all  the  land  between  us."  The  Al- 
gonkins  joined  in  the  peace.  "  Here  is  a  skin  of  a  moose," 
said  Negabamat,  chief  of  the  Montagnez ;  "  make  moccasons 
for  the  Mohawk  deputies,  lest  they  wound  their  feet  on 


1647.    PROGRESS  OF  FRANCE  IN  NORTH  AMERICA.       311 

their  way  home."  "  We  have  thrown  the  hatchet,"  said 
the  Mohawks,  "  so  high  into  the  air,  and  beyond  the  skies, 
that  no  arm  on  earth  can  reach  to  bring  it  down.  The 
French  shall  sleep  on  our  softest  blankets,  by  the  warm  fire, 
that  shall  be  kept  blazing  all  the  night  long.  The  shades 
of  our  braves  that  have  fallen  in  war  have  gone  so  deep 
into  the  earth  that  they  never  can  be  heard  calling  for  re- 
venge." "  I  place  a  stone  on  their  graves,"  said  Pieskaret, 
"  that  no  one  may  move  their  bones." 

With  greater  sincerity,  the  Abenakis  of  Maine,  touched 
by  the  charities  of  Silleri,  had  solicited  missionaries.  Con- 
version to  Catholic  Christianity  would  establish  their  warlike 
tribes  as  a  wakeful  barrier  against  New  England  ; 
and,  in  August,  1646,  Father  Gabriel  Dreuillettes,  ^ug^lg. 
first  of  Europeans,  made  the  long  and  painful  jour- 
ney from  the  St.  Lawrence  to  the  sources  of  the  Kennebec, 
and,  descending  that  stream  to  its  mouth,  in  a  bark  canoe 
continued  his  roamings  on  the  open  sea  along  the  coast. 
The  cross  was  already  planted  there,  raised  by  the  disciples 
of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  over  their  humble  lodge  near  the 
mouth  of  the  Penobscot.  After  a  short  welcome,  the  ear- 
nest apostle  returned  to  the  wilderness ;  and,  a  few  miles 
above  the  mouth  of  the  Kennebec,  the  Indians,  in  large 
numbers,  gathered  about  him,  building  a  rude  chapel.  In 
the  winter,  he  was  their  companion  in  their  long  excursions 
in  quest  of  game.  Who  can  tell  all  the  hazards  that  were 
encountered  ?  The  sharp  rocks  in  the  channel  of  the  river 
were  full  of  perils  for  the  frail  canoe ;  winter  turned  the 
solitudes  into  a  wilderness  of  snow ;  the  rover.  Christian  or 
pagan,  must  carry  about  with  him  his  house,  his  furniture, 
and  his  food.  But  the  Jesuit  succeeded  in  winning  the 
affections  of  the  savages ;  and,  after  a  pilgrimage  of 
ten  months,  an  escort  of  thirty  conducted  him  to  ju^^fs. 
Quebec,  full  of  health  and  joy. 

Thus,  in  September,  1646,  within  fourteen  years  from  the 
restoration  of  Quebec,  France,  advancing  rapidly  towards 
a  widely  extended  dominion  in  North  America,  had  its  out- 
posts on  the  Kennebec  and  on  the  shores  of  Lake  Huron, 
and  had  approached  the  settlements  round  Albany. 


312  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXII. 

The  strength  of  the  colony  lay  in  the  missions.  The 
government  was  weakened  by  the  royal  jealousy; 
1646.  the  population  hardly  increased ;  there  was  no  mili- 
tary force ;  and  the  trading  company,  deriving  no 
income  but  from  peltries  and  Indian  traffic,  had  no  motive 
to  make  large  expenditures  for  protecting  the  settlements 
or  promoting  colonization.  Thus  the  missionaries  were  left, 
almost  alone,  to  contend  against  the  thousands  of  braves 
that  roamed  over  Acadia  and  the  vast  basin  of  the  St. 
Lawrence.  But  what  could  sixty  or  seventy  devotees  ac- 
complish amongst  the  countless  wild  tribes  from  Nova 
Scotia  to  Lake  Superior  ?  They  were  at  war  as  Tvell  with 
nature  as  with  savage  inhumanity,  and  had  to  endure  perils 
and  sufferings  under  every  form.  The  frail  bark  of  the 
1623.  Franciscan  Viel  had  been  dashed  in  pieces,  and  the 
missionary  drowned,  as  he  was  shooting  a  rapid,  on  his 
return  from  the  Hurons.  Father  Anne  de  Koue,  in  the  depth 
of  winter,  leaves  Quebec  for  the  mouth  of  the  Sorel,  to  shrive 
the  garrison ;  and,  losing  his  way  among  pathless  snows, 
perishes  by  the  frosts  of  Canada.  No  faithful  Jesuit  would 
allow  an  infant  to  die  unbaptized;  and  the  Indian  father, 
interpreting  the  sprinkling  as  a  device  to  kill  his  child, 
avenged  his  affections  by  the  death  of  the  missionary.  Still 
greater  was  the  danger  which  sprung  from  the  hostility  of 
the  tribes  towards  the  French,  or  towards  the  nations  by 
whom  their  envoys  were  received. 

1645.  A  treaty  of  peace  had,  indeed,  been  ratified,  and 

1646.  fQj.  Qjjg  winter  Algonkins,  Wyandots,  and  Iroquois 
joined  in  the  chase.     The  wilderness  seemed  hushed 

1646.  into  tranquillity.  In  May,  1646,  Father  Jogues, 
commissioned  as  an  envoy,  was  hospitably  received 

by   the   Mohawks,    and  gained  an  opportunity  of  offering 

the  friendship  of  France  to  the  Onondagas.  On  his  return, 
jg4g     his  favorable   report  raised  a  desire  of   establishing 

June  27.  a  permanent  mission  among  the  Five  Nations ;  and 
he  himself,  the  only  one  who  knew    their   dialect, 

Oct.  was  selected  as  its  founder.  "Ibo,  et  non  redibo," 
—  "I    shall  go,  but  shall  never  return," — were   his 

words  of  farewell.     On  arriving  at  the  Mohawk  castles,  he 


1648.    PROGRESS  OF  FRANCE  IN  NORTH  AMERICA.      313 

was  received  as  a  prisoner,  and,  against  the  voice  ^q^q 
of  the  other  nations,  was  condemned  by  the  grand  ^^t.  is. 
council  of  the  Mohawks  as  an  enchanter,  who  had  blighted 
their  harvest.  Timid  by  nature,  yet  tranquil  from  zeal,  he 
approached  the  cabin  where  the  death-festival  was  kept, 
and,  as  he  entered,  received  the  death-blow.  His  head 
was  hung  upon  the  palisades  of  the  village,  his  body  thrown 
into  the  Mohawk  River. 

This  was  the  signal  for  war.  The  Iroquois  renewed 
their  invasions  of  the  Huron  country.  In  vain  did 
the  French  seek  to  engage  New  England  as  an  ally  i648. 
in  the  contest.  The  Huron  nation  was  doomed  ;  the 
ancient  clans  of  the  Wyandots  were  to  be  exterminated  or 
scattered ;  and  the  missionaries  on  the  river  Wye  shared 
the  dangers  of  the  tribes  with  whom  they  dwelt. 

Each  sedentary  mission  was  a  special  point  of  attraction 
to  the  invader,  and  each,  therefore,  was  liable  to  the  hor- 
rors of  an  Indian  massacre.  Such  was  the  fate  of  the 
village  of  St.  Joseph.  On  the  morning  of  July  4,  1648, 
when  the  braves  were  absent  on  the  chase,  and  none  but 
women,  children,  and  old  men  remained  at  home,  Father 
Anthony  Daniel  hears  the  cry  of  danger  and  confusion.  He 
hastens  to  the  scene  to  behold  his  converts,  in  the  apathy  of 
terror,  falling  victims  to  the  fury  of  Mohawks.  No  age, 
however  tender,  excites  mercy ;  no  feebleness  of  sex  wins 
compassion.  A  group  of  women  and  children  fly  to  him  to 
escape  the  tomahawk ;  as  if  his  lips,  uttering  messages  of 
love,  could  pronounce  a  spell  that  would  curb  the  madness 
of  destruction.  Those  who  had  formerly  scoffed  his  mis- 
sion implore  the  benefit  of  baptism.  He  bids  them  ask  for- 
giveness of  God,  and,  dipping  his  handkerchief  in  water, 
baptizes  the  crowd  of  suppliants  by  aspersion.  Just  then 
the  palisades  are  forced.  Should  he  fly?  He  first  ran  to 
the  wigwams  to  baptize  the  sick;  he  next  pronounced  a 
general  absolution  on  all  who  sought  it,  and  then  prepared 
to  resign  his  life  as  a  sacrifice  to  his  vows.  The  wigwams 
are  set  on  fire  ;  the  Mohawks  approach  the  chapel,  and  the 
consecrated  envoy  serenely  advances  to  meet  them.  As- 
tonishment seized  the  barbarians.     At  length,  drawing  near, 


314  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIL 

they  discharge  at  him  a  flight  of  arrows.  All  gashed  and 
rent  by  wounds,  he  still  continued  to  speak  with  surprising 
energy ;  now  inspiring  fear  of  the  divine  anger,  and  anon 
breathing  the  affectionate  messages  of  mercy  and  grace. 
Such  were  his  actions  till  he  received  a  death-blow  from  a 
halbert.  The  victim  to  the  heroism  of  charity  died,  the  name 
of  Jesus  on  his  lips ;  the  wilderness  gave  him  a  grave ;  the 
Huron  nation  were  his  mourners.  By  his  religious  associ- 
ates it  was  believed  that  he  appeared  twice  after  his  death, 
youthfully  radiant  in  the  sweetest  form  of  celestial  glory ; 
that,  as  the  reward  for  his  torments,  a  crowd  of  souls, 
redeemed  from  purgatory,  were  his  honoring  escort  into 
heaven. 

1649.  Not  a  year  elapsed,  when,  in  the  dead  of  a  Cana- 
Mar.  16.  ^^^^  winter,  a  party  of  a  thousand  Iroquois  fell, 
before  dawn,  upon  the  little  village  of  St.  Ignatius.  It  was 
sufficiently  fortified,  but  only  four  hundred  persons  were 
present,  and  there  were  no  sentinels.  The  palisades  were 
set  on  fire,  and  an  indiscriminate  massacre  of  the  sleeping 
inhabitants  followed. 

The  village  of  St.  Louis  was  alarmed ;  and  its  women  and 
children  fly  to  the  woods,  while  eighty  warriors  prepare  a 
defence.  A  breach  is  made  in  the  palisades ;  the  enemy 
enter ;  and  the  group  of  Indian  cabins  becomes  a  slaughter- 
house. In  this  village  resided  Jean  de  Brebeuf,  and  the 
younger  and  gentler,  yet  not  less  patient,  Gabriel  Lalle- 
mand.  The  character  of  Brebeuf  was  firm  beyond  every 
trial ;  his  virtue  had  been  nursed  in  the  familiar  sight 
of  death.  Disciplined  by  twenty  years'  service  in  the 
wilderness  work,  he  wept  bitterly  for  the  sufferings  of  his 
converts,  but  for  himself  he  exulted  in  the  prospect  of 
martyrdom.  Both  the  missionaries  might  have  escaped ; 
but  here,  too,  there  were  converts  not  yet  baptized;  be- 
sides, the  dying  might,  in  the  hour  of  agony,  desire  the 
ordinances  ;  and  both,  therefore,  remain.  They  exhort  the 
combatants  to  fear  God  :  they  bend  over  the  dying  to  give 
them  baptism,  and  claim  their  spirits  as  redeemed. 

Success  was  with  the  Mohawks :  the  Jesuit  priests  are 
now  their  prisoners,  to  endure  all  the  tortures  which  the 


1649.    PROGRESS   OF  FRANCE  IN  NORTH  AMERICA.      315 

ruthless  fury  of  a  raging  multitude  could  invent.  Brebeuf 
was  set  apart  on  a  scaffold,  and,  in  the  midst  of  every  out- 
rage, rebuked  his  persecutors,  and  encouraged  his  Huron  con- 
verts. They  cut  his  lower  lip  and  his  nose ;  applied  burning 
torches  to  his  body ;  burned  his  gums,  and  thrust  hot  iron 
down  his  throat.  Deprived  of  his  voice,  his  assured  coun* 
tenance  and  confiding  eye  still  bore  witness  to  his  firmness. 

The  delicate  Lallemand  was  stripped  naked,  and  envel- 
oped from  head  to  foot  with  bark  full  of  rosin.  Brought 
into  the  presence  of  Brebeuf,  he  exclaimed :  "  We  are  made 
a  spectacle  unto  the  world,  and  to  angels,  and  to  men." 
The  pine  bark  was  set  on  fire,  and,  when  it  was  in  a  blaze, 
boiling  water  was  poured  on  the  heads  of  both  the  mission- 
aries. The  voice  of  Lallemand  was  choked  by  the  thick 
smoke  ;  but,  the  fire  having  snapped  his  bonds,  he  lifted  his 
hands  to  heaven,  imploring  the  aid  of  Him  who  is  an  aid  to 
the  weak.  Brebeuf  was  scalped  while  yet  alive,  and  died 
after  a  torture  of  three  hours  ;  the  sufferings  of  Lallemand 
were  prolonged  for  seventeen  hours.  The  lives  of  both  had 
been  a  continual  heroism  ;  their  deaths  were  the  astonish- 
ment of  their  executioners. 

It  may  be  asked  if  these  massacres  quenched  enthusiasm. 
The  Jesuits  never  receded ;  but  as,  in  a  brave  army,  new 
troops  press  forward  to  fill  the  places  of  the  fallen,  there 
were  never  wanting  heroism  and  enterprise  in  behalf  of  the 
cross  and  French  dominion. 

It  was  intended  to  collect  the  scattered  remnants  1649. 
of  the  Hurons  in  the  Grand  Manitoulin  Isle,  which 
was  chosen  to  be  the  centre  of  the  western  missions.  "  We 
shall  be  nearer,"  wrote  Rageneau,  cheeringly,  "  to  the  Al- 
gonkins  of  the  west ; "  and,  as  the  way  to  Quebec,  even  by 
the  Ottawa  and  the  St.  Lawrence,  was  beset  with  danger,  it 
was  thought  that,  through  the  remote  wilderness,  some  safe 
avenue  might  yet  be  opened.  But  the  Hurons,  destined  to 
be  scattered  through  the  widest  regions,  hovered,  for  a 
season,  round  the  isles  that  were  nearest  the  graves  of  their 
ancestors ;  and  the  mission  on  the  Grand  Manitoulin  was 
abandoned. 

The  great  point  of   desire  was  the   conversion   of  the 


316  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIL 

Five  Nations  themselves.  Undismayed  by  barbarism  or 
the  martyrdom  of  their  brethren,  the  missionaries  were  still 
eager  to  gain  admission,  while  the  Mohawks  and  the  other 
tribes,  having  now  through  commerce  with  the  Dutch 
learned  the  use  of  fire-arms,  seemed  resolved  on  asserting 
their  power  in  every  direction,  —  not  only  over  the  bar- 
barians of  the  north,  the  west,  and  the  south-west,  but  over 
the  French  themselves.     They  bade  defiance  to  forts  and 

intrenchments ;  their  war-parties  triumphed  at  Three 
1651.       Rivers,  were  too  powerful  for  the  palisades  of  Silleri, 

and  proudly  passed  by  the  walls  of  Quebec.  The 
Ottawas  were  driven  from  their  old  abodes  to  the  forests  in 
the  Bay  of  Saginaw.  No  frightful  solitude  in  the  wilder- 
ness, no  impenetrable  recess  in  the  frozen  north,  was  safe 
against  the  passions  of  the  Five  Nations.  Their  chiefs, 
animated  not  by  cruelty  only,  but  by  pride,  were  resolved 
that  no  nook  should  escape  their  invasions,  that  no  nation 
should  rule  but  themselves ;  and,  as  their  warriors  strolled 

by  Three  Rivers  and  Quebec,  they  killed  the  gov- 

1653.  ernor  of  the  one  settlement,  and  carried  off  a  priest 
from  the  other. 

At  length,  satisfied  with  the  display  of  their  prowess,  they 
themselves  desired  rest.     Besides,  of  the  scattered  Hurons, 
many  had  sought  refuge  among  their  oppressors,  and,  ac- 
cording to  an  Indian  custom,  had  been  incorporated  with 
the  tribes  of  the  Five  Nations.     Of  these,  some  re- 

1654.  tained  affection  for  the  French.     When  peace  was 
concluded,  and  Father  Le  Moyne  appeared  as  envoy 

among  the  Onondagas  to  ratify  the  treaty,  he  found  there 
a  multitude  of  Hurons,  who,  like  the  Jews  at  Babylon, 
retained  their  faith  in  a  land  of  strangers.  The  hope 
was  renewed  of  winning  the  whole  west  and  north  to 
Christendom. 

The  villages  bordering  on  the  settlements  of  the  Dutch 
were  indifferent  to  the  peace ;  the  western  tribes,  who  could 

more  easily  traffic  with  the  French,  adhered  to  it 
1654.       firmly.     At  last,  the  Mohawks  also  grew  weary  of 

the  strife ;  and  Le  Moyne,  selecting  the  banks  of 
their  river  for  his  abode,  resolved  to  persevere,  in  the  vain 


( 


1655.    PROGRESS  OF  FRANCE  IN  NORTH  AMERICA.       317 

hope  of  infusing  into  their  savage  nature  the  gentler  spirit 
of  civilization. 

The  Onondagas  were  more  sincere  ;  and  when  Chaumonot, 
a  native  of  France,  long  a  missionary  among  the 
Hurons,  left  Quebec  for  their  territory,  he  was  ac-       1655. 
companied  by  Claude  Dablon,  a  missionary,  who  had 
recently  arrived  from  France,  and  a  party  of  laymen 
and  soldiers.    They  were  hospitably  welcomed  at  On-    Nov.  5. 
ondaga,  the  principal  village  of  the  tribe.     A  general 
convention  was  held,  by  their  desire  ;  before  the  mul-  Nov.  15. 
titudinous  assembly  of  the  chiefs  and  the  whole  peo- 
ple, gathered  under  the  open   sky,   among   the   primeval 
forests,  presents  were  delivered  ;  and  the  Jesuit,  with  much 
gesture,  after  the  Italian  manner,  discoursed  so  eloquently 
to  the  crowd  that  it  seemed  to  Dablon  as  if  the  word  of  God 
had  been  preached  to  all  the  nations  of  that  land. 
On  the  next  day,  the  chiefs  and  others  crowded  round  Nov.  16. 
the  Jesuits,  with  their  songs  of  welcome.     "  Happy 
land  !  "  they  sang ;  "  happy  land  !  in  which  the  French  are  to 
dwell ; "  and  the  chief  led  the  chorus,  "  Glad  tidings !  glad 
tidings !    it  is  well  that  we  have    spoken  together ;   it   is 
well  that  we  have  a  heavenly  message."     A  chapel 
sprung  into  existence,  and,  by  the  zeal  of  the  na-  Nov.  is. 
tives,  was  finished  in  a  day.     "  For   marbles   and 
precious  metals,"  writes  Dablon,  "  we  employed  only  bark ; 
but   the   path    to    heaven   is   as   open   through   a   roof   of 
bark  as  through  arched  ceilings  of  silver  and  gold."     The 
savages  showed  themselves  susceptible  of  religious  ecstasy ; 
and  in  the  heart  of  New  York,  near  the  present  city  of 
Syracuse,  hard  by  the  spring  which  is  still  known  as  the 
Jesuits'  Well,  the  services  of  the  Roman  church  were  chanted 
as  securely  as  in  any  part  of  Christendom.     The  charter  of 
the  hundred  associates  included  the  basin  of  every  tributary 
of  the   St.  Lawrence.     The  Onondagas  dwelt  exclusively 
on  the  Oswego  and  its  tributary  waters ;  their  land  was, 
therefore,  a  part  of  the  empire  of  France.     The  cross  and 
the  lily,  emblems  of  France  and  Christianity,  were  cher- 
ished in  the  hamlet  which  was  at  that  time  the  farthest 
inland  European  settlement  in  our  country,  and  preceded 


318  COLONIAL  HISTOEY.  Chap.  XXXIL 

by  a  century  the  occupation  of  Western  New  York  by  the 
English. 

The  success  of  the  mission  encouraged  Dablon  to  invite 
a  French  colony  into  the  land  of   the   Onondagas ;    and, 
though  the  attempt  excited  the  jealousy  of  the  Mohawks, 
whose  war-chiefs,  in  their  hunt  after  Huron  fugitives,  still 
roamed  even  to  the  Isle  of  Orleans,  a  company  of 
;^aj^7     fifty  Frenchmen  embarked  for  Onondaga.     Diffuse 
harangues,  dances,  songs,  and  feastings  were   their 
July  11.  welcome  from  the  Indians.    In  a  general  convocation 
of  the  tribe,  the   question  of  adopting  Christianity 
July  24.  as  its  religion  was  debated  ;  and  sanguine  hope  al- 
ready included  the  land  of  the  Onondagas  as  a  part  of 
Christendom.     The  chapel,  too  small  for  the  throng  of  wor- 
shippers that  assembled  to  the  sound  of  its  little  bell,  was 
enlarged.    The  Cayugas  also  desired  a  missionary,  and  they 
received  the  fearless  Rene  Mesnard.     In  their  village,  a 
chapel  was  erected,  with  mats  for  the  tapestry ;  and  there 
the  pictures  of  the  Saviour  and  of  the  Virgin  mother  were 
unfolded  to  the  admiring  xjhildren  of  the  wilderness.     The 
Oneidas  also  listened  to  the  missionary;  and,  early 
1657.       in   1657,  Chaumonot   reached  the  more  fertile   and 
more  densely  peopled  land  of  the  Senecas.     The  in- 
fluence of  France  was  planted  in  the  valleys  of  Western 
Kew  York.     The  Jesuit  priests  published  their  faith  from 
the  Mohawk  to  the  Genesee,  Onondaga  remaining  the  cen- 
tral station. 

But  the  savage  nature  of  the  tribes  was  unchanged.  At 
this  time,  a  ruthless  war  of  extermination  was  waged  against 
the  nation  of  Erie  and  in  the  north  of  Ohio.  The  crowded 
hamlet  became  a  scene  of  carnage.  Prisoners,  too,  were 
brought  home  to  the  villages,  and  delivered  to  the  flames ; 
and  what  could  the  Jesuits  expect  of  nations  who  could 
burn  even  children  with  refinements  of  tortures ?  "Our 
lives,"  said  Mesnard,  "are  not  safe."  In  Quebec,  and  in 
France,  men  trembled  for  the  missionaries.  They  made 
their  home  among  cannibals;  hunger,  thirst,  nakedness, 
were  to  be  encountered  ;  nature  itself  offered  trials  ;  and  the 
first  colony  of  the  French,  making  its  home  near  the  Lake 


1659.    PROGRESS  OF  FRANCE  IN  NORTH  AMERICA.       319 

of  Onondaga,  and  encountering  the  forest  with  the  axe, 
suffered  from  fever  before  they  could  prepare  their  tene- 
ments.   Border  collisions  also  continued.    The  Oneidas  mur- 
dered three  Frenchmen,  and  the  French  retaliated 
by  seizing  Iroquois.     At  last,  when  a  conspiracy  was       i657. 
•framed  in  the  tribe  of  the  Onondagas,  the  French, 
having  vainly  solicited   re-enforcements,  abandoned  M^arAg. 
their   chapel,   their   cabins,   their   hearths,    and   the 
valley  of  the  Oswego.     The  Mohawks  compelled  Le 
Moyne  to  return ;  and  the  French  and  the  Five  Na-       ^q^^^ 
tions  were  once  more  at  war.     Such  was  the  issue  of 
the  most  successful  attempt  at  French  colonization  in  New 
York. 


1658. 


320  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIH. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

FRANCE    AND    THE    VALLEY    OF    THE    MISSISSIPPL 

Meantime,  the  Jesuits  reached  our  country  in  the  far 

west.  In  August,  1654,  two  young  fur-traders,  sinit- 
Aug%.   t®^  with  the  love  of  adventure,  joined  a  band  of  the 

Ottawas  or  other  Algonkins,  and,  in  their  gondolas 
of  bark,  ventured  on  a  voyage  of  five  hundred  leagues. 
After  two  years,  they  reappeared,  accompanied  by  a  fleet  of 
fifty  canoes.  The  natives  ascend  the  cliff  of  St.  Louis,  wel- 
comed by  a  salute  from  the  ordnance  of  the  castle.  They 
describe  the  vast  lakes  of  the  west,  and  the  numerous  tribes 
that  hover  round  them ;  they  speak  of  the  Knisteneaux, 
whose  homes  stretched  away  to  the  Northern  Sea ;  of  the 
powerful  Sioux,  who  dwelt  beyond  Lake  Superior ;  and 
they  demand  commerce  with  the  French,  and  missionaries 
for  the  boundless  west. 

The   request   was   eagerly  granted ;   and   Gabriel 

Dreuillettes,  the  same  who  carried  the  cross  through 
the  forests  of  Maine,  and  Leonard  Gareau,  of  old  a  mission- 
ary among  the  Hurons,  were  selected  as  the  first  relig- 
ious envoys  to  a  land  of  sacrifices  and  deaths.  The 
canoes  are  launched;  the  tawny  mariners  embark;  the  oars 
flash,  and  sounds  of  joy  and  triumph  mingle  with  tlie  last 
adieus.     But,   just  below  Montreal,  a  band   of  Mohawks, 

enemies  to  the  Ottawas,  awaited  the  convoy;  in  the 
Aug.  30.  affray,  Gareau  was  mortally  wounded,  and  the  fleet 

dispersed. 
The  remote  nations,  by  the  necessity  of  the  case,  still 
sought  alliance  with  the  French.  The  Mohawks,  and  their 
confederates,  receiving  European  arms  from  Albany,  exter- 
minated the  Fries,  and  approached  the  Miamis  and  the  Illi- 
nois.    The   western   Indians   desired   commerce   with   the 


1661.         FRANCE  AND   THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY.  321 

French,  that  they  might  gain  means  to  resist  the  Iroquois ; 
and,  as  furs  were  abundant  there,  the  traders  pressed  for- 
ward to  Green  Bay.  Two  of  them  dared  to  pass  the 
winter  of  1659  on  the  banks  of  Lake  Superior.  En-  i659. 
riched  with  knowledge  of  the  western  world,  in  the 
summer  of  1660,  they  came  down  to  Quebec,  with  an  escort 
of  sixty  canoes,  rowed  by  three  hundred  Algonkins,  and 
laden  with  peltry. 

If  the  Five  Nations  can  penetrate  these  remote  re-       leeo. 
gions,  to  satiate  their  passion  for  blood ;  if  mercantile 
enterprise  can  bring  furs  from  the  plains  of  the   Sioux,  — 
why  cannot  the  cross  be  borne  to  their  cabins,  and  the  name 
of  the  king  of  France  be  pronounced  in  their  councils  ?   The 
zeal  of  Francis  de  Laval,  the  bishop  of  Quebec,  kindled  with 
a  desire  himself  to  enter  on  the  mission ;  but  the  lot  fell  to 
Rene  Mesnard.     He  was  charged  to  visit  Green  Bay  and 
Lake  Superior,  and,  on  a  convenient  inlet,  to  establish  a 
residence  as  the   common   place   of   assembly  for  the  sur- 
rounding nations.     Joining  a  party  of  Ottawas  who  were 
returning  to  their  homes  on  Lake   Superior,  he  made  few 
preparations ;    for   he    trusted,    such    are   his   words,    "  in 
the  Providence  which  feeds  the  little  birds  of  the  desert, 
and  clothes  the  wild  flowers  of  the  forests."     Obedi- 
ent to  his  vows,  the  aged  man  entered  on  the  path      Aug. 
that  was  red  with  the  blood  of  his  predecessors,  and 
made  haste  to  scatter  the  seeds  of  truth  through  the  wilder- 
ness, even  though  the  sower  cast  his  seed  in  weeping.     "  In 
three  or  four  months,"  he  wrote  to  a  friend,  "  you 
may  add  me  to  the  memento  of  deaths."    In  October,    Oct.  15. 
he  carried  the  flying  church  of  Christian  savages  to 
the  bay  which  he  called  St.  Theresa,  and  which  may  have 
been  the  Bay  of  Keweena,  on  the  south  shore  of  Lake  Supe- 
rior.    After  a  residence  of  eight  months,  he  yielded  to  the 
invitation  of  Hurons  who  had  found  refuge  in  the 
Isle  of  St.  Michael ;  and,  bidding  farewell  to  his  neo-       leei. 
phytes  and  the  French,  and  to  those  whom  he  never 
more  should  meet  on  earth,  he  departed,  with  one  attendant, 
for  the  Bay  of   Chegoimegon.     The  accounts  would  indi- 
cate that  he  took  the  route  by  way  of  Keweena  Lake  and 

VOL.  II.  21 


322  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIH. 

Portage.     There,  while  his  attendant  was  employed 
Aagho.  i^  transporting  the  canoe,  Mesnard  was  lost  in  the 
forest,  and  was  never  again  seen. 

1660.  Meantime,  the  colony  of  New  France  was  too  fee- 
ble to  defend  itself  against  the  fickleness  and  increas- 
ing confidence  of  the  Iroquois  :  the  harvest  could  not  be 
gathered  in  safety ;  the  convents  were  insecure ;  many  pre- 
pared to  return  to  France ;  in  moments  of  gloom,  it  seemed 

as  if  all  must  be  abandoned.    True,  religious  zeal  was 

1661.  still  active.  Le  Moyne  once  more  appeared  among 
the  Five  Nations,  and  was  received  with  affection  at 
Onondaga.     The  deputies  of  the  Senecas,  the  Cayu- 

Aug.  12.  gas,  and  the  Onondagas,  assembled  to  the  sound  of 
the  bell  that  had  belonged  to  the  chapel  of  the  Jesu- 
its ;  and  the  resolve  of   the   council   was   peace.     But  he 
could   influence   only  the   upper  nations.     The  Mohawks 
would  not  be  appeased  ;  Montreal  was  not  safe  :  one 

1662.  ecclesiastic  was  killed  near  its  gates ;  a  new  organi- 
zation of  the  colony  was  needed,  or  it  would  come 

to  an  end. 
1663.         The  company  of  the  hundred  associates  resolved, 
Feb.  14.  therefore,  to   resign  the   colony  to   the   king ;   and 
immediately,  under  the  auspices  of  Colbert,  it  was  conceded 
to  the  new  company  of  the  West  Indies. 

An  appeal  was  made,  in  favor  of  Canada,  to  the  king ; 
the  company  of  Jesuits  publicly  invited  him  to  assume  its 
defence,  and  become  their  champion  against  the  Iroquois. 
After  various  efforts  at  fit  appointments,  the  year  1665  saw 
the  colony  of  New  France  protected  by  a  royal  regiment, 
with  the  aged  but  indefatigable  Tracy  as  general ;  with 
Courcelles,  a  veteran  soldier,  as  governor ;  and  with  Talon, 
a  man  of  business  and  of  integrity,  as  intendant  and  repre- 
sentative of  the  king  in  civil  affairs.  Every  omen  was  favor- 
able, save  the  conquest  of  New  Netherland  by  the  English. 
That  conquest  eventually  made  the  Five  Nations  a  depen- 
dence on  the  English  world ;  and  if  for  twenty-five  years 
England  and  France  sued  for  their  friendship  with  uncer- 
tain success,  yet  afterwards,  in  the  grand  division  between 
parties  throughout  the  world,  the  Bourbons  found  in  them 


1666.         FRANCE   AND   THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY.  823 

implacable  opponents.  The  Europeans  in  their  struggle 
against  legitimacy  and  for  freedom,  having  come  all  the 
way  into  the  wilderness,  pursued  the  contest  even  there, 
making  of  the  Iroquois  allies,  and  of  their  hunting-fields 
battle-grounds. 

With  better  hopes,  undismayed  by  the  sad  fate  of 
Gareau  and  Mesnard,  indifferent  to  hunger,  nakedness, 
and  cold,  to  the  wreck  of  their  ships  of  bark,  and  to  fa- 
tigues and  weariness  by  night  and  by  day,  —  in 
August,  1665,  Father  Claude  Allotiez  embarked  on  2ug!*8. 
a  mission  by  way  of  the  Ottawa  to  the  far  west. 
Early  in  September  he  reached  the  rapids,  through  which 
the  waters  of  the  upper  lakes  rush  to  the  Huron,  and  ad- 
mired the  beautiful  river  with  its  woody  isles  and  inviting 
bays.  On  the  second  of  that  month,  he  entered  the  lake 
which  the  savages  reverenced  as  a  divinity,  and  of  which 
the  entrance  presents  a  spectacle  of  magnificence  rarely 
excelled  in  the  rugged  scenery  of  the  north.  He  passed  the 
lofty  ridge  of  naked  sand,  which  stretches  along  the  shore 
its  stupendous  piles  of  drifting  barrenness ;  he  sailed  by 
the  cliffs  of  pictured  sandstone,  which  for  twelve  miles 
rise  three  hundred  feet  in  height,  fretted  by  the  chafing 
waves  into  arches  and  bastions,  caverns  and  towering  walls, 
heaps  of  prostrate  ruins,  and  erect  columns  crowned  with 
fantastic  entablatures.  Landing  on  the  south  shore,  he  said 
mass  ;  thus  consecrating  the  forests,  which  he  claimed  for 
a  Christian  king. 

Sailing  beyond  the  Bay  of  St.  Theresa,  and  having  vainly 
sought  for  a  mass  of  pure  copper  of  which  he  had 
heard  rumors,  on  the  first  day  of  October  he  arrived  Oct. 
at  the  great  village  of  the  Chippewas  in  the  Bay  of 
Chegoimegon.  It  was  at  a  moment  when  the  young  war- 
riors were  bent  on  a  strife  with  the  warlike  Sioux.  A  grand 
council  of  ten  or  twelve  neighboring  nations  was  held  to 
wrest  the  hatchet  from  the  hands  of  the  rash  braves ;  and 
Allotiez  was  admitted  to  an  audience  before  the  vast  assem- 
bly. In  the  na;me  of  Louis  XIV.  and  his  viceroy,  he  com- 
manded peace,  and  offered  commerce  and  an  alliance  against 
the  Iroquois ;  the  soldiers  of  France  would  smooth  the  path 


324  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIIL 

between  the  Chippewas  and  Quebec  ;  would  brush  the  pirate 
canoes  from  the  rivers;  would  leave  to  the  Five  Nations 
no  choice  but  between  tranquillity  and  destruction.*  On  the 

shore  of  the  bay,  to  which  the  abundant  fisheries 
^mi.^    attracted  crowds,  a  chapel  soon  rose,  and  the  mission 

of  the  Holy  Spirit  was  founded.  There  admiring 
throngs  who  had  never  seen  a  European  came  to  gaze  on 
the  white  man,  and  on  the  pictures  which  he  displayed  of 
the  realms  of  hell  and  of  the  last  judgment ;  there  a  choir 
of  Chippewas  were  taught  to  chant  the  pater  and  the  ave. 
During  his  long  sojourn,  he  lighted  the  torch  of  faith  for 
more  than  twenty  different  nations.  The  dwellers  round 
the  Sault,  a  band  of  "  the  Outehibouec,"  as  the  Jesuits  called 
the  Chippewas,  pitched  their  tents  near  his  cabin  for  a 
month,  and  received  his  instructions.  The  scattered  Ilurons 
and  Ottawas,  that  roamed  the  deserts  north  of  Lake  Supe- 
rior, appealed  to  his  compassion,  and,  before  his  return, 
obtained  his  presence  in  their  morasses.  From  the  unex- 
plored recesses  of  Lake  Michigan  came  the  Pottawatomies ; 
and  these  worshippers  of  the  sun  invited  him  to  their 
homes.  The  Sacs  and  Foxes  travelled  on  foot  from  their 
country,  which  abounded  in  deer  and  beaver  and  buffalo. 
The  Illinois,  a  hospitable  race,  unaccustomed  to  canoes, 
having  no  weapon  but  the  bow  and  arrow,  came  to  re- 
hearse their  sorrows.  Their  ancient  glory  and  their  num- 
bers had  been  diminished  by  the  Sioux  on  the  one  side,  and 
the  Iroquois,  armed  with  muskets,  on  the  other.  Curiosity 
was  roused  by  their  tale  af  the  noble  river  on  which  they 
dwelt,  and  which  flowed  towards  the  south.  "  They  had  no 
forests,  but,  instead  of  them,  vast  prairies,  where  herds  of 
deer  and  buffalo,  and  other  animals,  grazed  on  the  tall 
grasses."  They  explained,  also,  the  wonders  of  their  peace- 
pipe,  and  declared  it  their  custom  to  welcome  the  friendly 
stranger  with  shouts  of  joy.  "  Their  country,"  said  Allouez, 
"  is  the  best  field  for  the  gospel.  Had  I  had  leisure,  I  would 
have  gone  to  their  dwellings,  to  see  with  my  own  eyes  all 
the  good  that  was  told  me  of  them." 

Then,  too,  at  the  very  extremity  of  the  lake,  the  mission- 
ary met  the  wild,  impassive  warriors  of  the  Sioux,  who 


I 


1668.         FRANCE  AND  THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY.  325 

dwelt  to  the  west  of  Lake  Superior,  in  a  land  of  prairies, 
with  wild  rice  for  food,  and  skins  of  beasts,  instead  of  bark, 
for  roofs  to  their  cabins,  on  the  banks  of  the  Great  River, 
of  which  Alloiiez  reported  the  name  to  be  "  Messipi." 

After  residing  for  nearly  two  years  chiefly  on  the  southern 
margin  of  Lake  Superior,  and  connecting  his  name  with 
the  progress  of  discovery  in  the  west,  Alloiiez  in 
August,  1667,  returned  to  Quebec  to  urge  the  estab-  j^^^ 
lishment  of  permanent  missions,  to  be  accompanied 
by  little  colonies  of  French  emigrants ;  and  such  was  hia 
own  fervor,  such  the  earnestness  with  which  he  was  seconded, 
that,  in  two  days,  with  another  priest,  Louis  Nicolas,  for  his 
companion,  he  was  on  his  way,  returning  to  the  mission  at 
Chegoimegon.  In  this  year,  some  Indians  gave  to  the 
French  a  massive  specimen  of  very  pure  copper  ore. 

The  prevalence  of  peace  favored  the  progress  of  1668. 
French  dominion ;  the  company  of  the  West  Indies, 
resigning  its  monopoly  of  the  fur-trade,  gave  an  impulse  to 
Canadian  enterprise ;  a  recruit  of  missionaries  had  arrived 
from  France ;  and  Claude  Dablon  and  James  Marquette 
repaired  to  the  Chippewas  at  the  Sault,  to  establish  the 
mission  of  St.  Mary.  It  is  the  oldest  settlement  begun  by 
Europeans  within  the  present  limits  of  the  commonwealth 
of  Michigan. 

For  the  succeeding  years,  the  illustrious  triumvirate, 
Alloiiez,  Dablon,  and  Marquette,  were  employed  in  confirm- 
ing the  influence  of  France  in  the  regions  that  extend  from 
Green  Bay  to  the  head  of  Lake  Superior,  mingling  happi- 
ness with  suffering,  and  winning  glory  by  perseverance. 
For  to  what  inclemencies  from  nature  and  from  man  was 
each  missionary  among  the  barbarians  exposed !  He  defies 
the  severity  of  climate,  wading  through  water  or  through 
snows,  without  the  comfort  of  fire ;  having  no  bread  but 
pounded  maize,  and  often  no  food  but  the  unwholesome  moss 
from  the  rocks ;  laboring  incessantly ;  exposed  to  live,  as  it 
were,  without  nourishment,  to  sleep  without  a  resting-place, 
to  travel  far  and  always  incurring  perils,  —  to  carry  his 
life  in  his  hand,  expecting  captivity,  death  from  the  toma- 
hawk, tortures,  fire.     And  yet  the  simplicity  and  the  free- 


826  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIH. 

dom  of  life  in  the  wilderness  had  their  charms.  The  heart 
of  the  missionary  would  swell  with  delight,  as,  under  a 
serene  sky,  and  with  a  mild  temperature,  and  breathing  a 
pure  air,  he  moved  over  waters  as  transparent  as  the  most 
limpid  fountain.  Every  encampment  offered  his  attendants 
the  pleasures  of  the  chase.  Like  a  patriarch,  he  dwelt 
beneath  a  tent ;  and  of  the  land  through  which  he  walked, 
he  was  its  master,  in  the  length  of  it  and  in  the  breadth  of 
it,  profiting  by  its  productions,  without  the  embarrassment 
of  ownership.  How  often  was  the  pillow  of  stones  like  that 
where  Jacob  felt  the  presence  of  God  !  How  often  did  the 
ancient  oak,  of  which  the  centuries  were  untold,  seem  like 
the  tree  of  Mamre,  beneath  which  Abrahahi  broke  bread 
with  angels !  Each  day  gave  the  pilgrim  a  new  site  for  his 
dwelling,  which  the  industry  of  a  few  moments  would  erect, 
and  for  which  nature  provided  a  floor  of  green  inlaid  with 
flowers. 

The   purpose   of  discovering  the   Mississippi,   of 

which  the  tales  of  the  natives   had   published   the 

magnificence,  sprung  from  Marquette  himself.  He 
Sept.  13.  had  resolved    on    attempting   it   in   the   autumn   of 

1669;  and,  when  delay  intervened,  from  the  neces- 
sity of  employing  himself  at  Chegoimegon,  which  Alloiiez 
had  exchanged  for  a  new  mission  at  Green  Bay,  he  selected  a 

young  Illinois  as  a  companion,  by  whose  instructions 
\qjq-       he  became  familiar  with  the  dialect  of  that,  tribe. 

Continued  commerce  wdth  the  French  gave  pro- 

1(570.  .  .  o  1 

tection  to  the  Algonkins  of  the  west,  and  confirmed 
their  attachment.  A  political  interest  grew  up,  and  ex- 
tended to  Colbert  and  the  ministry  of  Louis  XIV.  It 
became  the  fixed  purpose  of  Talon,  the  intendant  of  the 
colony,  to  spread  the  power  of  France  to  the  utmost  bor- 
ders of  Canada,  and  even  to  the  South  Sea.  To  this  end,  as 
soon  as  he  disembarked  at  Quebec,  he  made  choice  of  Saint- 
Lusson  to  hold  a  congress  at  the  Falls  of  St.  Mary.  The 
invitation  was  sent  by  Nicolas  Perrot  in  every  direction  for 
more  than  a  hundred  leagues  round  about ;  and  fourteen 
nations,  among  them  Sacs,  Foxes,  and  Miamis,  agreed  to 
be  present  by  their  ambassadors. 


1671.        FRANCE  AND  THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY.  327 

The  fourth  of  June,  1671,  the  day  appointed  for  jg^j 
the  congress  of  nations,  arrived ;  and,  with  AUoliez  J^^^®- 
as  his  interpreter,  Saint-Lusson,  fresh  from  an  excursion  to 
Southern  Canada,  —  that  is,  the  borders  of  the  Kennebec, 
where  English  habitations  were  ah-eady  sown  broadcast 
along  the  coast,  —  appeared  at  the  Falls  of  St.  Mary  as  the 
delegate  of  Talon.  There  are  assembled  the  envoys  of  the 
republicans  of  the  wilderness,  and  brilliantly  clad  officers 
from  the  veteran  armies  of  the  king  of  France.  It  was 
announced  to  the  natives,  gathered,  as  they  were,  from  the 
head-springs  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  the  Mississippi,  and  the 
Red  River,  that  they  were  placed  under  his  protection.  A 
cross  of  cedar  was  raised  ;  and,  amidst  the  groves  of  maple 
and  pine,  of  elm  and  hemlock,  that  are  intermingled  on  the 
banks  of  the  St.  Mary,  where  the  bounding  river  lashes  its 
waters  into  snowy  whiteness,  as  they  hurry  past  the  dark 
evergreen  of  the  forested  islands  in  the  channel,  — the  whole 
company  of  the  French,  bowing  before  the  emblem  of  man's 
redemption,  chanted  to  its  glory  a  hymn  of  the  seventh 
century  :  —  Vexilla  Regis  prodeunt ; 

Fulget  crucis  mysterium. 

The  banners  of  heaven's  King  advance ; 

The  mystery  of  the  cross  shines  forth. 
By  the  side  of  the  cross,  a  cedar  column  was  planted  and 
marked  with  the  lilies  of  the  Bourbons  in  the  presence  of 
the  ancient  races  of  America,  in  the  heart  of  our  continent. 
Yet  this  daring  ambition  of  the  servants  of  a  military  mon- 
arch was  doomed  to  leave  no  abiding  monument,  this  echo 
of  the  middle  age  to  die  away. 

In  the  same  year,  Marquette  gathered  the  wander-  i67i. 
ing  remains  of  one  branch  of  the  Huron  nation  round 
a  chapel  at  Point  St.  Ignace,  on  the  continent  north  of  the 
peninsula  of  Michigan.  The  climate  was  repulsive ;  but 
fish  abounded,  at  all  seasons,  in  the  strait  j  and  the  estab- 
lishment was  long  maintained  as  the  key  to  the  west,  and 
the  convenient  rendezvous  of  the  remote  Algonkins.  Here 
Marquette  once  more  gained  a  place  among  the  founders  of 
Michigan.  Nicolas  Perrot  attempted  the  discovery  of  cop- 
per mines  near  Lake  Superior. 


328  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIIL 

1672.  The  countries  south  of  the  village  founded  by  Mar- 

quette were  explored  by  Allotiez  and  Dablon,  who 
bore  the  cross  through  Eastern  Wisconsin  and  the  north  of . 
Illinois,  visiting  the  Mascoutins  and  the  Kickapoos  on  the 
Milwaukee,  and  the  Miamis  at  the  head  of  Lake  Michigan. 
The  young  men  of  the  latter  tribe  were  intent  on  an  excur- 
sion against  the  Sioux,  and  they  prayed  to  the  missiona- 
ries to  give  them  the  victory.  After  finishing  the  circuit, 
Alloiiez  extended  his  rambles  to  the  cabins  of  the  Foxes  on 
the  river  which  bears  their  name. 

The  long-expected  discovery  of  the  Mississippi  was 
at  hand,  to  be  accomplished  by  Joliet,  of  Quebec,  of 
whom  there  is  no  record  but  of  this  one  excursion,  and  by 
Marquette,  who,  after  years  of  pious  assiduity  to  the  poor 
wrecks  of  Hurons,  whom  he  planted  near  abundant  fisher- 
ies on  the  cold  extremity  of  Michigan,  entered  with  equal 
humility  upon  a  career,  which  exposed  his  life  to  perpetual 
danger,  and  by  its  results  affected  the  destiny  of  nations. 

The  enterprise  projected  by  Marquette  had  been  favored 
by  Talon,  the  intendant  of  New  France,  who,  on  the  point 
of  quitting  Canada,  wished  to  signalize  the  last  period  of 
his  stay  by  ascertaining  if  the  French,  descending  the  great 
river  of  the  central  west,  could  bear  the  banner  of  France 
to  the  Pacific,  or  plant  it,  side  by  side  with  that  of  Spain, 
on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico. 

A  branch  of  the  Pottawatomies,  familiar  with  Marquette 
as  a  missionary,  heard  with  wonder  the  daring  proposal. 
"  Those  distant  nations,"  said  they,  "  never  spare  the  stran- 
gers ;  their  mutual  wars  fill  their  borders  with  bands  of 
warriors ;  the  Great  River  abounds  in  monsters,  which 
devour  both  men  and  canoes ;  the  excessive  heats  occasion 
death."  "  I  shall  gladly  lay  down  my  life  for  the  salvation 
of  souls,"  replied  the  good  father ;  and  the  docile  nation 
joined  him  in  prayer. 

At  the  last  village  on  Fox  River  ever  visited  by 

the   French,  —  where    Kickapoos,    Mascoutins,    and 

Miamis  dwelt  together  on  a  hill  in  the  centre  of  prairies 

and  groves,  that  extended  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach, 

and  where  Allouez  had  already  raised  the  cross,  which  the 


1673.         FRANCE  AND  THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY.  329 

savages  had  ornamented  with  brilliant  skins  and  crimson 
belts,  a  thank-offering  to  the  Great  Manitou,  —  the  ancients 
assembled  in  council  to  receive  the  pilgrims.  "  My  com- 
panion," said  Marquette,  "is  an  envoy  of  France  to  dis- 
cover new  countries ;  and  I  am  ambassador  from  God  to 
enlighten  them  with  the  gospel;."  and,  offering  presents, 
he  begged  two  guides  for  the  morrow.  The  wild  men  an- 
swered courteously,  and  gave  in  return  a  mat,  to  serve  as 
a  couch  during  the  long  voyage. 

Behold,  then,  in  1673,  on  the  tenth  day  of  June,  the 
meek,  single-hearted,  unp;;etending,  illustrious  Marquette, 
with  Joliet  for  his  chieftain,  five  Frenchmen  as  his  com- 
panions, and  two  Algonkins  as  guides,  lifting  their  two 
canoes  on  their  backs,  and  walking  across  the  narrow  port- 
age that  divides  the  Fox  River  from  the  Wisconsin.  They 
reach  the  water-shed ;  uttering  a  special  prayer  to  the  im- 
maculate Virgin,  they  leave  the  streams  that,  flowing  on- 
wards, could  have  borne  their  greetings  to  the  castle  of 
Quebec ;  already  they  stand  by  the  Wisconsin.  "  The 
guides  returned,"  says  the  gentle  Marquette,  "  leaving  us 
alone,  in  this  unknown  land,  in  the  hands  of  Providence." 
Embarking  on  the  broad  Wisconsin,  the  discoverers,  as  they 
sailed  west,  went  solitarily  down  its  current,  between  alter- 
nate plains  and  hillsides,  beholding  neither  man  nor  the 
wonted  beasts  of  the  forest :  no  sound  broke  the  appalling 
silence,  but  the  ripple  of  their  canoe,  and  the  lowing  of  the 
buffalo.  In  seven  days,  "  they  ent^ed  happily  the  Great 
River,  with  a  joy  that  could  not  be  expressed  ; "  and  the 
two  birch-bark  canoes,  raising  their  happy  sails  under  new 
skies  and  to  unknown  breezes,  floated  down  the  calm  mag- 
nificence of  the  ocean  stream,  over  broad  clear  sand-bars,  the 
resort  of  innumerable  water-fowl;  winding  through  islets 
that  swelled  with  tufts  of  massive  thickets  from  the  bosom 
of  the  channel,  and  between  the  natural  parks  and  prairies 
of  Illinois  and  Iowa. 

About  sixty  leagues  below  the  mouth  of  the  Wis-     1673. 
consin,  the  western  bank  of  the  Mississippi  bore  on  J""®  25. 
its  sands  the  trail  of  men ;  a  little  footpath  was  discerned 
leading  into  a  beautiful  prairie  j  and,  leaving  the  canoes, 


380  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIIL 

Joliet  and  Marquette  resolved  alone  to  brave  a  meeting 
with  the  savages.  After  walking  six  miles,  they  beheld  a 
village  on  the  banks  of  a  river,  and  two  others  on  a  slope, 
at  a  distance  of  a  mile  and  a  half  from  the  first.  The  river 
was  the  Mou-in-gou-e-na,  or  Moingona,  of  which  we  have 
corrupted  the  name  into  Des  Moines.  Marquette  and  Joliet 
were  the  first  white  men  who  trod  the  soil  of  Iowa.  Com- 
mending themselves  to  God,  they  uttered  a  loud  cry.  The 
Indians  hear;  four  old  men  advance  slowly  to  meet  them, 
bearing  the  peace-pipe,  brilliant  with  many  colored  plumes. 
"  We  are  Illinois,"  said  they,  —  that  is,  when  translated, 
"  We  are  men ; "  and  they  offered  the  calumet.  An  aged 
chief  received  them  at  his  cabin  with  upraised  hands, 
exclaiming :  "  How  beautiful  is  the  sun.  Frenchman,  when 
thou  comest  to  visit  us !  Our  whole  village  awaits  thee ; 
thou  shalt  enter  in  peace  into  all  our  dwellings."  And 
the  pilgrims  were  followed  by  the  devouring  gaze  of  an 
astonished  crowd. 

At  the  great  council,  Marquette  published  to  them  the 
one  true  God,  their  Creator.  He  spoke,  also,  of  the  great 
captain  of  the  French,  the  governor  of  Canada,  who  had 
chastised  the  Five  Nations  and  commanded  peace ;  and  he 
questioned  them  respecting  the  Mississippi  and  the  tribes  that 
possessed  its  banks.  For  the  messengers,  who  announced  the 
subjection  of  the  Iroquois,  a  magnificent  festival  was  pre- 
pared of  hominy  and  fish,  and  the  choicest  viands  from  the 
prairies.  • 

After  six  days'  delay,  and  invitations  to  new  visits,  the 
chieftain  of  the  tribe,  with  hundreds  of  warriors,  attended 
the  strangers  to  their  canoes ;  and,  selecting  a  peace-pipe 
embellished  with  the  head  and  neck  of  brilliant  birds,  and 
all  feathered  over  with  plumage  of  various  hues,  they  hung 
round  Marquette  the  mysterious  arbiter  of  peace  and  war, 
the  sacred  calumet,  a  safeguard  among  the  nations. 
1673.  The  little  group  proceeded  onwards.     "  I  did  not 

•^^^^y-  fear  death,"  says  Marquette ;  "  I  should  have  es- 
teemed it  the  greatest  happiness  to  have  died  for  the  glory 
of  God."  They  passed  the  perpendicular  rocks,  which  wore 
the  appearance  of  monsters ;  they  heard  at  a  distance  the 


I 


1673.         TRANCE  AND  THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY.  331 

noise  of  the  waters  of  the  Missouri,  known  to  them  by  its 
Algonkin  name  of  Pekitanoni ;  and,  when  they  came  to  the 
grandest  confluence  of  rivers  in  the  world,  —  where  the 
swifter  Missouri  rushes  like  a  conqueror  into  the  cahner 
Mississippi,  dragging  it,  as  it  were,  hastily  to  the  sea,  —  the 
good  Marquette  resolved  in  his  heart,  anticipating  Lewis 
and  Clarke,  one  day  to  ascend  the  mighty  river  to  its 
source ;  to  cross  the  ridge  that  divides  the  oceans,  and, 
descending  a  westerly  flowing  stream,  to  publish  the  gospel 
to  all  the  people  of  this  New  World. 

In  a  little  less  than  forty  leagues,  the  canoes  floated  past 
the  Ohio,  which  then,  and  long  afterwards,  was  called  the 
Wabash.  Its  banks  were  tenanted  by  numerous  villages  of 
the  peaceful  Shawnees,  who  quailed  under  the  incursions  of 
the  Iroquois. 

The  thick  canes  begin  to  appear  so  close  and  strong 
that  the  buffalo  could  not  break  through  them ;  the  insects 
become  intolerable ;  as  a  shelter  against  the  suns  of  July, 
the  sails  are  folded  into  an  awning.  The  prairies  vanish ; 
and  forests  of  whitewood,  admirable  for  their  vastness  and 
height,  crowd  even  to  the  skirts  of  the  pebbly  shore.  It 
was,  moreover,  observed  that,  in  the  land  of  the  Chickasaws, 
the  Indians  had  obtained  fire-arms. 

Near  the  latitude  of  thirty-three  degrees,  on  the  western 
bank  of  the  Mississippi,  stood  the  village  of  Mitchigamea,  in 
a  region  that  had  not  been  visited  by  Europeans  since  the 
days  of  De  Soto.  "  Now,"  thought  Marquette,  "  we  must, 
indeed,  ask  the  aid  of  the  Virgin."  Armed  with  bows  and 
arrows,  with  clubs,  axes,  and  bucklers,  amidst  continual 
whoops,  the  natives,  bent  on  war,  embark  in  vast  canoes 
made  out  of  the  trunks  of  hollow  trees ;  but,  at  the  sight  of 
the  mysterious  peace-pipe  held  aloft,  God  touched  the  hearts 
of  the  old  men,  who  checked  the  impetuosity  of  the  young ; 
and,  throwing  their  bows  and  quivers  into  the  canoes,  as  a 
token  of  peace,  they  prepared  a  hospitable  welcome. 

The  next  day,  a  long,  wooden  canoe,  containing  ten  men, 
escorted  the  discoverers,  for  eight  or  ten  leagues,  to  the 
village  of  Akansea,  the  limit  of  their  voyage.  They  had 
left  the  region  of  the  Algonkins,   and,  in  the  midst  of  the 


832  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap-XXXIH. 

Sioux  and  Chickasaws,  could  speak  only  by  an  inteq^reter. 
A  half  league  above  Akansea,  they  were  met  by  two  boats, 
in  one  of  which  stood  the  commander,  holding  in  his  hand 
the  peace-pipe,  and  singing  as  he  drew  near.  After  offering 
the  pipe,  he  gave  bread  of  maize.  The  wealth  of  his  tribe 
consisted  in  buffalo  skins ;  their  weapons  were  axes  of  steel, 
—  a  proof  of  commerce  with  Europeans. 

Thus  had  our  travellers  descended  below  the  entrance  of 
the  Arkansas,  to  the  genial  climes  that  have  almost  no  win- 
ter but  rains,  beyond  the  bound  of  the  Huron  and  Algon- 
kin  languages,  to  the  vicinity  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and 
to  tribes  of  Indians  that  had  obtained  European  arms  by 
traffic  with  Spaniards  or  with  Virginia.  So,  having  ascer- 
tained that  the  father  of  rivers  went  not  to  the  ocean  east 
of  Florida,  nor  yet  to  the  Gulf  of  California,  on  the  seven- 
teenth of  July  Marquette  and  Joliet  left  Akansea  and 
ascended  the  Mississippi. 

At  the  thirty-eighth  degree  of  latitude,  they  entered  the 
river  Illinois,  and  discovered  a  country  without  its  paragon 
for  fertile  prairies.  The  tribe  of  the  Illinois  entreated  Mar- 
quette to  come  back  and  reside  among  them.  One  of  their 
chiefs,  with  their  young  men,  conducted  the  party  to  Chi- 
cago ;  and,  before  the  end  of  September,  the  explor- 

1674.  ers  were  safe  in  Green  Bay.     In  a  relation  sent  the 
next  year  by  Father  Dablon,  a  canal  is  proposed  to 

connect  Lake  Michigan  with  the  Illinois  River.    . 

Joliet  returned  to  Quebec  to  announce  the  discovery,  of 
which  the  fame,  through  Talon,  fired  the  ambition  of 

1675.  Colbert.     In  1675,  Marquette,  who  had  been  delayed 
by  his  failing  health  for  more  than  a  year,  rejoined 

the  Illinois  on  their  river.  Assembling  the  whole  tribe, 
whose  chiefs  and  men  were  reckoned  at  two  thousand,  he 
raised  before  them  pictures  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  spoke  to 
them  of  one  who  had  died  on  the  cross  for  all  men,  and 
built  an  altar  and  said  mass  in  their  presence  on  the  prairie. 
Again  celebrating  the  mystery  of  the  eucharist,  on  Easter 
Sunday  he  took  possession  of  the  land  in  the  name  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and,  to  the  universal  joy  of  the  multitude,  founded 
the  mission   of   the   Immaculate  Conception.     This   work 


1677.         FRANCE  AND   THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY.  333 

accomplished,  he  journeyed  by  way  of  Chicago  to  Mack- 
inaw; but,  foreknowing  his  death,  he  entered  a  little  river 
in  Michigan  to  breathe  his  last.  Exposed  upon  the  shore, 
like  Francis  Xavier,  whom  he  loved  to  imitate,  he  repeated 
in  solitude  all  his  acts  of  devotion  of  the  preceding  days. 
Then,  having  called  his  companions  and  given  them  absolu- 
tion, he  bogged  tliem  once  more  to  leave  him  alone.  When, 
after  a  little  while,  they  went  to  seek  him,  they  found  him 
passing  gently  away  near  the  stream  that  bears  his  name. 
On  its  highest  bank,  the  canoe-men  dug  his  grave  in  the  sand. 
Ever  after,  the  forest  rangers,  if  in  danger  on  Lake  Michi- 
gan, would  invoke  his  name.  One  state  in  the  north-west 
calls  after  him  city  and  county  and  river. 

At  the  death  of  Marquette,  there  dwelt  at  the  outlet  of 
Lake  Ontario  Robert  Cavalier  de  la  Salle.  Of  a  good 
family,  he  had  renounced  his  inheritance  by  entering  the 
seminary  of  the  Jesuits.  After  profiting  by  the  discipline 
of  their  schools,  and  obtaining  their  praise  for  purity  and 
diligence,  he  had  taken  his  discharge  from  the  fraternity ; 
and,  with  no  companions  but  poverty  and  a  boundless  sj^irit 
of  enterprise,  about  the  year  1667,  when  the  attention  of 
all  France  was  directed  towards  Canada,  the  young  mer- 
chant adventurer  embarked  for  fame  and  fortune  in  New 
France.  Established  at  first,  as  a  fur-trader,  at  La  Chine, 
and  encouraged  by  Talon  and  Courcelles,  he  explored  Lake 
Ontario,  and  ascended  to  Lake  Erie ;  and,  when  the  French 
governor,  some  years  after  occupying  the  banks  of 
the  Sorel,  began  to  fortify  the  outlet  of  Lake  On-  i675. 
tario.  La  Salle,  repairing  to  France,  and  aided  by 
Frontenac,  obtained  the  rank  of  nobility,  and  the  grant  of 
Fort  Frontenac,  now  the  village  of  Kingston,  on  condition 
of  maintaining  the  fortress.  The  grant  was,  in  fact,  a  con- 
cession of  a  large  domain  and  the  exclusive  trafiic  with  the 
Five  Nations. 

In   the   portion  of  the  wilderness  of   which  the    leisto 
young  man  was  proprietary,  cultivated  fields  proved      ^^''^• 
the  fertility  of  the   soil;   his   herd   of  cattle   multiplied; 
groups  of  Iroquois  built  their  cabins  in  the  environs,  a  few 
French  settled  under  his  shelter ;  Franciscans,  now  tolerated 


334  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIIL 

in  Canada,  renewed  their  missions  under  his  auspices ;  the 
noble  forests  invited  the  construction  of  log  cabins  and  ves- 
sels with  decks ;  and  no  canoe-men  in  Canada  could  shoot  a 
rapid  with  such  address  as  the  pupils  of  La  Salle.  Fortune 
was  within  his  grasp.  But  Joliet,  as  he  descended  from  the 
upper  lakes,  had  passed  by  the  bastions  of  Fort  Frontenac, 
had  spread  the  news  of  the  brilliant  career  of  discoveries 
opened  in  the  west.  In  the  solitudes  of  Upper  Canada,  the 
secluded  adventurer  had  inflamed  his  imagination  by  read- 
ing the  voyages  of  Columbus  and  the  history  of  the  rambles 
of  De  Soto ;  and  the  Iroquois  had,  moreover,  described  to 
him  the  course  of  the  Ohio.  Thus  the  young  enthusiast 
framed  plans  of  colonization  in  the  south-west,  and  of  com- 
merce between  Europe  and  the  Mississippi.  Once  more  he 
repaired  to  France ;  and  from  the  policy  of  Colbert,  who 
instinctively  listened  to  the  vast  schemes  which  his  heroic 
sagacity  had  planned,  and  the  special  favor  of  Seignelay, 
Colbert's  son,  he  obtained,  with  the  monopoly  of  the  traffic 

in  buffalo  skins,  a  commission  for  perfecting  the  dis- 
1678.       covery  of  the  Great  River.     With  Tonti,  an  Italian 

veteran,  as  his  lieutenant,  and  a  recruit  of  mechanics 
and  mariners ;  with  anchors,  and  sails,  and  cordage  for  rig- 
ging a  ship,  and  stores  of  merchandise  for  traffic  with  the 
natives,  —  with  swelling  hopes  and  a  boundless  ambition.  La 
Salle,  in  the  autumn  of  1678,  returned  to  Fort  Frontenac. 
As  a  discoverer,  he  should  have  gone  to  the  head-waters  of 
the  Alleghany,  and  so  to  the  Ohio ;  he  chose  the  way  by  the 
lakes  for  the  sake  of  trading  for  buffalo  robes.  Before 
winter,  "  a  wooden  canoe  "  of  ten  tons,  the  first  that  ever 
sailed  into  Niagara  River,  bore  a  part  of  his  company  to  the 
vicinity  of  the  falls ;  at  Niagara,  a  trading-house  was  estab- 
lished ;  in  the  mouth  of  the  Cayuga  Creek,  the  work  of 
ship-building  began  ;  Tonti  and  the  Franciscan  Hennepin, 
venturing  among  the  Senecas,  established  relations  of 
amity;  while  La  Salle  himself,  skilled  in  the  Indian  dia^ 
lects,  was  now  urging  forward  the  ship-builders,  now  gather- 
ing furs  at  his  magazine,  now  gazing  at  the  mighty  cataract, 
now  sending  forward  a  detachment  into  the  country  of  the 
Illinois  to  prepare  the  way  for  his  reception. 


1679.         FRANCE  AND  THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY.  835 

Under  the  auspices  of  La  Salle,  Europeans  first  pitched 
a  tent   at  Niagara;   it  was   he  who,  in  1679,  amidst   the 
salvo  from  his  little  artillery,  the  chanting  of  the  Te  Deum, 
and  the  astonished  gaze  of  the   Senecas,  first   launched    a 
wooden  vessel,  a  bark  of  sixty  tons,  on  the  upper  Niagara 
River,  and,  in  the  "  Griffin,"  freighted  with  the  colony  of 
fur-traders  for  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi,  on  the 
seventh  day  of  August  unfurled  a  sail  to  the  breezes    ^^fj^^j. 
of  Lake  Erie.     Indifferent  to  the  malignity  of  those 
who  envied  his  genius  or  were  injured  by  his  special  privi- 
leges. La  Salle,  first  of  mariners,  sailed  over  Lake  Erie  and 
between  the  verdant  isles  of  the  Detroit ;  debated 
planting  a  colony  on  its  banks  ;  gave  a  name  to  Lake  Aug.  17. 
St.  Clair,  from  the  day  on  which  he  traversed  its 
shallow  waters ;  and,  after  escaping  from  storms  on 
Lake  Huron,  and  planting  a  trading-house  at  Mack-  Aug.  27. 
inaw,  he  cast  anchor  in  Green  Bay.     Here  having 
despatched  his  brig  to  Niagara  River  with  a  very  rich  cargo 
of  furs,  he  himself,  with  his  company  in  scattered  groups, 
repaired  in  bark  canoes  to  the  head  of  Lake  Michigan  ;  and 
at  the  mouth  of  the  St.  Joseph's,  in  that  peninsula  where 
Allotiez  had  already  gathered  a  village  of  Miamis,  awaiting 
the  return   of  the  "  Griffin,"  he  constructed  the    trading- 
house,  with  palisades,  known  as  the  Fort  of  the  Miamis.     It 
marks  his  careful  forethought  that  he  sounded  the  mouth 
of  the  St.  Joseph's,  and  raised  buoys  to  mark  the  channel. 
But  of  his  vessel,  on  which  his  fortunes  so  much  depended, 
no  tidings  came.     Weary  of  delay,  he  resolved  to 
penetrate  Illinois;   and,  leaving  ten  men  to   guard    Dec.  3. 
the  fort  of  the  Miamis,  La  Salle  himself,  with  Hen- 
nepin and  two  other  Franciscans,  with  Tonti  and  about 
thirty  followers,  ascended  the  St.  Joseph's,  and,  by  a  short 
portage  over  bogs  and  swamps  made  dangerous  by  a  snow- 
storm,  entered    the    Kankakee.      Descending   its   narrow 
stream,  before   the   end   of   December,  the   company  had 
reached  the  site  of  an  Indian  village  on  the  Illinois,  prob- 
ably not  far  from  Ottawa,  in  La  Salle  county.     The  tribe 
was  absent,  passing  the  winter  in  the  chase. 


336  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIIL 

iggQ  On  the  banks  of  Lake  Peoria,  Indians  appeared ; 

Jan.  4.  tiiey  were  Illinois ;  and,  desirous  to  obtain  axes  and 
fire-arms,  they  offered  the  calumet,  and  agreed  to  an  alli- 
ance :  if  the  Iroquois  should  renew  their  invasions,  they 
would  claim  the  French  as  allies.  They  heard  with  joy 
that  colonies  were  to  be  established  in  their  territory ; 
they  described  the  course  of  the  Mississippi,  and  they  were 
willing  to  guide  the  strangers  to  its  mouth.  The  spirit  and 
prudence  of  La  Salle,  who  was  the  life  of  the  enterprise, 
won  the  friendship  of  the  natives.  But  clouds  lowered  over 
his  path :  the  "  Griffin,"  it  seemed  certain,  was  wrecked, 
thus  delaying  his  discoveries  as  well  as  impairing  his  for- 
tunes ;  his  men  began  to  despond  :  alone  against  them  all,  he 
toiled  to  revive  their  courage ;  there  could  be  no  safety  but 
in  union  :  "  None,"  he  added,  "  shall  stay  after  the  spring, 
unless  from  choice."  But  fear  and  discontent  pervaded  the 
company ;  and  when  La  Salle  planned  and  began  to  build  a 
fort  on  the  banks  of  the  Illinois,  four  days'  journey,  it  is 
said,  below  Lake  Peoria,  thwarted  by  destiny,  and  almost 
despairing,  he  named  the  fort  Crevecoeur. 

Yet  here  the  immense  power  of  his  will  appeared.  With 
no  resources  but  in  himself,  fifteen  hundred  miles  from  the 
nearest  French  settlement,  impoverished,  pursued  by  enemies 
at  Quebec,  and  in  the  wilderness  surrounded  by  uncertain 
nations,  he  inspired  his  men  with  resolution  to  saw  trees 
into  plank  and  prepare  a  bark ;  he  despatched  Louis  Hen- 
nepin to  explore  the  upper  Mississippi ;  he  questioned  the 
Illinois  and  their  southern  captives  on  the  course  of  the 
Mississippi ;  he  formed  conjectures  respecting  the  Tennessee 
River ;  and  then,  as  new  recruits  were  needed,  and  sails  and 
cordage  for  the  bark,  in  the  month  of  March,  with  a  musket 
and  a  pouch  of  powder  and  shot,  with  a  blanket  for  his  pro- 
tection, and  skins  of  which  to  make  moccasons,  he, 
Marcii.  with  three  companions,  set  off  on  foot  for  Fort  Fron- 
tenac,  to  trudge  through  thickets  and  forests,  to  wade 
through  marshes  and  melting  snows,  having  for  his  pathway 
the  ridge  of  highlands  which  divide  the  basin  of  the  Ohio 
from  that  of  the  lakes,  without  drink  except  water  from 
the  brooks,  without  food  except  supplies  from  the  gun. 


i 


1681.         FRANCE   AND   THE   MISSISSIPPI   VALLEY.  337 

During  the  absence  of  La  Salle,  Michael  Accault,  accom- 
panied by  Du  Gay  and  by  the  Franciscan,  Louis  Hennepin, 
bearing  the  calumet,  followed  the  Illinois  to  its  junction  with 
the  Mississippi ;  and,  invoking  the  guidance  of  St.  Anthony 
of  Padua,  they  then  ascended  the  mighty  stream  far  beyond 
the  mouth  of  the  Wisconsin.  The  great  falls  in  the  river, 
which  he  describes  with  tolerable  accuracy,  were  named 
from  the  chosen  patron  of  the  expedition.  On  a  tree  near 
the  cataract,  the  Franciscan  engraved  the  cross,  and  the 
arms  of  France ;  and,  after  a  summer's  rambles,  diversified 
by  a  short  captivity  among  the  Sioux,  the  party  returned, 
by  way  of  the  Wisconsin  and  Fox  Rivers,  to  the  French 
mission  at  Green  Bay. 

In  Illinois,  Tonti  w^as  less  fortunate.  La  Salle  had  se- 
lected, as  the  fit  centre  of  his  colony,  Rock  Fort,  near  a 
village  of  the  Illinois  ;  a  cliff  rising  two  hundred  feet  above 
the  river  that  flows  at  its  base,  in  the  centre  of  a  lovely 
country  of  verdant  prairies,  bordered  by  distant  slopes, 
richly  tufted  w^ith  oak  and  black  walnut,  and  the  noblest 
trees  of  the  American  forest.  This  rock  Tonti  was  to 
fortify  ;  and,  during  the  attempt,  men  at  Crevecoeur  de- 
serted. Besides,  the  enemies  of  La  Salle  had  instigated  the 
Iroquois  to  hostility ;  and,  in  September,  a  large  party  of 
them,  descending  the  river,  threatened  ruin  to  his  enterprise. 
After  a  parley,  Tonti  and  the  few  men  that  remained  with 
him,  excepting  the  aged  Franciscan  Gabriel  de  la  Ribourde, 
fled  to  Lake  Michigan,  wiiere  they  found  shelter  with  the 
Pottawatomies.  On  the  authority  of  a  legend  made  up  in 
Paris  from  the  adventures  of  Tonti,  —  a  legend  full  of  geo- 
graphical contradictions,  of  confused  dates,  and  manifest 
fiction,  —  some  have  placed  this  attack  of  the  Iroquois  on 
the  Illinois  in  1681.  The  narrative  of  Hennepin,  the  whole 
of  which  was  printed  in  1682,  proves  conclusively  that  it 
happened  in  1680,  as  Frontenac,  the  governor  of  Canada, 
related  at  the  time. 

When,  therefore,  La  Salle  returned  to  Illinois,  with  large 
supplies  of  men  and  stores  for  rigging  a  brigantine, 
he  found  the  post  in  Illinois  deserted.     Hence  came       lesi. 
the  delay  of  another  year,  which  was  occupied  in 


338  COLONIAL   HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIIL 

traffic  at  Green  Bay ;  in  looking  up  Tonti  and  his  men ;  and 
in  finishing  a  capacious  barge.  At  last,  in  the  early 
1682.  part  of  1682,  La  Salle  and  his  company  descended 
the  Mississippi  to  the  sea.  As  he  floated  down  its 
flood ;  as  he  framed  a  cabin  on  the  first  Chickasaw  bluff ;  as 
he  raised  the  cross  by  the  Arkansas ;  as  he  planted  the  arms  of 
France  near  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  —  he  anticipated  the  future 
affluence  of  emigrants,  and  heard  in  the  distance  the  foot- 
steps of  the  advancing  multitude  that  were  coming  to  take 
possession  of  the  valley.  Meantime,  he  claiined  the  terri- 
tory for  France,  and  gave  it  the  name  of  Louisiana.  The 
year  of  the  descent  has  been  unnecessarily  made  a  question ; 
its  accomplishment  was  known  in  Paris  before  the  end  of 
1682. 

This  was  the  period  of  the  proudest  successes  and  largest 
ambition  of  Louis  XIY.  La  Salle  will  return,  it  was  said, 
to  give  to  the  court  an  ample  account  of  the  terrestrial 
paradise  of  America ;  ih^re  the  king  will  at  once  call  into 

jggg  being  a  flourishing  empire.  And,  in  fact.  La  Salle, 
May  12.  remaining  in  the  west  till  his  exclusive  privilege  had 
^°^-       expired,  returned  to  Quebec  to  embark  for  France. 

Colbert,  whose  genius  had  awakened  a  national  spirit  in 
behalf  of  French  industry,  and  who  yet  had  rested  his 
system  of  commerce  and  manufactures  on  no  firmer  basis 
than  that  of  monopoly,  was  no  more ;  but  Seignelay,  his 
son,  the  minister  for  maritime  affairs,  listened  confidingly  to 
the  expected  messenger  from  the  laud  which  was  regarded 
with  pride  as  "the  delight  of  the  New  World." 

1684,  In  the  early  months  of  1684,  the  preparations  for 
July  24.  colonizing  Louisiana  were  perfected,  and  in  July  the 
fleet  left  Rochelle.  Four  vessels  were  destined  for  the 
Mississippi,  bearing  two  hundred  and  eighty  persons,  to  take 
possession  of  the  valley.  Of  these,  one  hundred  were 
soldiers,  —  an  ill  omen,  for  successful  colonists  always  defend 
themselves :  about  thirty  were  volunteers,  two  of  whom  — 
young  Cavalier,  and  the  rash,  passionate  Moranget — were 
nephews  to  La  Salle  :  of  ecclesiastics,  there  were  three 
Franciscans,  and  three  of  St.  Sulpice,  one  of  them  being 
brother  to  La  Salle ;  there  were,  moreover,  mechanics  of 


1685.         FRANCE  AND   THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY.  339 

various  skill ;  and  the  presence  of  young  women  proved 
the  design  of  permanent  colonization.  But  the  mechanics 
were  poor  workmen,  ill  versed  in  their  art ;  the  soldiers, 
though  they  had  for  their  commander  Joutel,  a  man  of 
courage  and  truth,  and  afterwards  the  historian  of  the  grand 
enterprise,  were  themselves  spiritless  vagabonds,  without 
discipline  and  without  experience  ;  the  volunteers  were  rest- 
less with  indefinite  expectations ;  and,  worst  of  all,  the 
naval  commander,  Beaujeu,  was  deficient  in  judgment, 
envious,  self-willed,  and  foolishly  proud. 

Disasters  lowered  on  the  voyage  at  its  commencement : 
a  mast  breaks  ;  they  return  ;  the  voyage  begins  anew  amidst 
variances  between  La  Salle  and  the  naval  commander.  In 
every  instance  on  the  record,  the  judgment  of  La  Salle  was 
right. 

At  St.  Domingo,  La  Salle,  delayed  and  cruelly  thwarted 
by  Beaujeu,  saw  already  the  shadow  of  his  coming 
misfortunes.  On  leaving  the  island,  they  were  more  Nov^ts 
at  variance  than  ever.  They  double  Cape  Antonio  ;  Dec.  12. 
they  discover  land  on  the  continent :  aware  of  the  Dec.  28. 
easterly  direction  of  the  gulf-stream,  they  sail  slowly 
in  the  opposite  course.  On  the  tenth  day  of  January,  jan^io. 
1685,  they  must  have  been  near  the  mouth  of  the 
Mississippi ;  but  La  Salle  thought  not,  and  the  fleet  passed 
beyond  it.  Presently,  he  perceived  his  error,  and  desired  to 
return ;  but  Beaujeu  refused ;  and  thus  they  went  to  the 
west,  and  still  to  the  west,  till  they  reached  the  Bay  of 
Matagorda.  Weary  of  differences  with  Beaujeu,  believing 
the  streams  that  had  their  outlet  in  the  bay  might  be  either 
branches  from  the  Mississippi  or  lead  to  its  vicinity,  La 
Salle  resolved  to  disembark.  While  he  was  busy  in  provid- 
ing for  the  safety  of  his  men,  his  store-ship,  on  entering  the 
harbor,  was  wrecked  by  the  careless  pilot.  Others  gazed 
listlessly ;  La  Salle,  calming  the  terrible  energy  of  his  grief 
at  the  sudden  ruin  of  his  boundless  hopes,  borrowed  boats 
from  the  fleet  to  save,  at  least,  some  present  supplies.  But 
with  night  came  a  gale  of  wind,  and  the  vessel  was  dashed 
utterly  in  pieces.  The  stores,  provided  with  the  munificence 
that  marked  the  plans  of  Louis  XIV.,  lay  scattered  on  the 


340  COLONIAL   HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIII 

sea ;  little  could  be  saved.  To  aggravate  despair,  the  sav- 
ages came  down  to  pilfer,  and  murdered  two  of  the  volun- 
teers. 

Terror  pervaded  the  group  of  colonists :  the  evils  of  the 
wreck  and  the  gale  were  charged  to  La  Salle,  as  if  he  ought 
to  have  deepened  the  channel  and  mastered  the  winds ; 
men  deserted,  and  returned  in  the  fleet.  La  Salle,  who,  by 
the  power  of  his  will,  controlled  the  feeble  and  irritable  per- 
sons that  surrounded  him,  and  even  censured  their  in efii- 
ciency,  their  treachery,  and  their  disobedience,  with  angry 
vehemence,  was  yet,  in  his  struggle  against  adversity,  mag- 
nanimously tranquil.  The  fleet  sets  sail,  and  there  remain 
on  the  beach  of  Matagorda  a  desponding  company  of 
1685.  about  two  hundred  and  thirty,  huddled  together  in 
a  fort  constructed  of  the  fragments  of  their  ship- 
wrecked vessel,  having  no  reliance  but  in  the  constancy 
and  elastic  genius  of  La  Salle. 

Ascending  the  small  stream  at  the  west  of  the  bay,  in  the 
vain  hope  of  finding  the  Mississippi,  La  Salle  selected  a  site 
on  the  open  ground  for  the  establishment  of  a  fortified  post. 
The  spot,  which  he  named  St.  Louis,  was  a  gentle  slope, 
which  showed,  towards  the  west  and  south-west,  the  bound- 
less expansion  of  the  landscape,  verdant  with  luxuriant 
grasses,  and  dotted  with  groves  of  forest  trees ;  south  and 
east  was  the  Bay  of  Matagorda,  skirted  with  prairies.  The 
waters  abounded  with  fish,  and  invited  crowds  of  wild  fowl ; 
the  fields  were  alive  with  deer,  and  bisons,  and  wild  turkeys, 
and  the  dangerous  rattlesnake,  bright  inhabitant  of  the 
meadows.  There,  imder  the  suns  of  June,  with  timber 
felled  in  an  inland  grove,  and  dragged  for  a  league  over 
the  prairie  grass,  the  colonists  prepared  to  build  a  shelter ; 
La  Salle  being  the  architect,  and  himself  marking  the  beams 
and  tenons  and  mortises.  With  parts  of  the  wreck,  brought 
up  in  canoes,  a  second  house  was  framed,  and  of  each  the 
roof  was  covered  with  buffalo  skins. 

This  is  the  settlement  which  made  Texas  a  part  of  Lou- 
isiana. In  its  sad  condition,  it  had  yet  saved  from  the 
wreck  a  good  supply  of  arms,  and  bars  of  iron  for  the  forge. 
Even  now,  this  colony  possessed,  from  the  bounty  of  Louis 


1687.         FRANCE  AND   THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY.  341 

Xiy.,  more  than  was  contributed  by  all  the  English  mon- 
archs  together  for  the  twelve  English  colonies  on  the  Atlan- 
tic. Its  number  still  exceeded  that  of  the  early  colony  in 
Virginia,  or  of  those  who  embarked  in  the  "  Mayflower." 
France  took  possession  of  Texas  ;  her  arms  were  carved 
on  its  forest  trees  ;  and  by  no  treaty  or  public  document, 
except  when  she  ceded  the  whole  of  Louisiana,  did  she  ever 
after  relinquish  the  right  to  the  province  as  colonized  under 
her  banners,  and  made  still  more  surely  a  part  of  her  terri- 
tory, because  the  colony  found  there  its  grave. 

Excursions  into  the  vicinity  of  the  Fort  St.  Louis  had 
discovered  nothing  but  the  luxuriant  productiveness 
of  the  country.     La  Salle  proposed  to  seek  the  Mis-       J^ec' 
sissippi  in  canoes ;  and,  after  an  absence  of  about  four 
months,  and  the  loss  of  twelve  or  thirteen  men,  he  re-       1686. 
turned  in  rags,  having  failed  to  find  "the  fatal  river,"    March, 
and  yet  renewing  hope  by  his  presence.    In  April,  he 
plunged  into  the  wilderness,  with  twenty  companions,  lured 
towards  New  Mexico  by  the  brilliant  fictions  of  the  rich 
mines  of  Sainte  Barbe,  the  El  Dorado  of  Northern  Mexico. 
There,  among  the  Cenis,  he   succeeded  in    obtaining  five 
horses,  and  supplies  of  maize  and  beans ;  but  he  found  no 
mines. 

On  his  return,  he  was  told  of  the  wreck  of  the  little  bark 
which  had  remained  with  the  colony  :  he  heard  it  unmoved. 
Heaven  and  man  seemed  his  enemies.  With  the  giant  en- 
ergy of  an  indomitable  will,  having  lost  his  hopes  of  for- 
tune, his  hopes  of  fame ;  with  his  colony  diminished  to 
about  forty,  among  whom  discontent  had  given  birth  to 
plans  of  crime;  with  no  Europeans  nearer  than  the  river 
Panuco,  no  French  nearer  than  Illinois,  —  he  resolved  to 
travel  on  foot  to  his  countrymen  at  the  north,  and  return 
from  Canada  to  renew  his  colony  in  Texas. 

Leaving  twenty  men  at  Fort  St.  Louis,  in  January,  lesi. 
1687,  La  Salle,  with  sixteen  men,  departed  for  Can-  '^*"-  ^^• 
ada.  Lading  their  baggage  on  the  wild  horses  from  the 
Cenis,  which  found  their  pasture  everywhere  in  the  prai- 
ries ;  in  shoes  made  of  green  buffalo  hides ;  for  want  of 
other  paths,  following  the  track  of  the  buffalo,  and  using 


342  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIH 

skins  as  the  only  shelter  against  rain ;  winning  favor  with 
the  savages  by  the  confiding  courage  of  their  leader,  —  they 
ascended  the  streams  towards  the  first  ridge  of  highlands, 
walking  through  beautiful  plains  and  groves,  among  deer 
and  buffaloes,  —  now  fording  clear  rivulets,  now  building  a 
bridge  by  felling  a  giant  tree  across  a  stream,  —  till  they 
had  passed  the  basin  of  the  Colorado,  and,  in  the  upland 
country,  had  reached  a  branch  of  Trinity  River.  In  the 
little  company  of  wanderers,  there  were  two  men,  Duhaut 
and  L'Archeveque,  who  had  embarked  their  capital  in  the 
enterprise.  Of  these,  Duhaut  had  long  shown  a  spirit  of 
mutiny :  disappointed  avarice  maddened  by  suffering,  and 
impatient  of  control,  awakened  ungovernable  hatred.  In- 
viting Moranget  to  take  charge  of  the  fruits  of  a 
Mar!  17.  l^uffalo  hunt,  they  quarrelled  with  him  and  murdered 
him.  Wondering  at  the  delay  of  his  nephew's  return. 
La  Salle,  on  the  twentieth  of  March,  went  to  seek  him.  At 
the  brink  of  the  river,  he  observed  eagles  hovering  as  if 
over  carrion ;  and  he  fired  an  alarm  gun.  Warned  by  the 
sound,  Duhaut  and  L'Archeveque  crossed  the  river ;  the 
former  skulked  in  the  prairie  grass  ;  of  the  latter,  La  Salle 
asked  :  "  Where  is  my  nephew  ?  "  At  the  moment  of  the 
answer,  Duhaut  fired ;  and,  without  uttering  a  word,  La 
Salle  fell  dead.  "  You  are  down  now,  grand  bashaw !  you 
are  down  now!"  shouted  one  of  the  conspirators,  as  they 
despoiled  his  remains,  which  were  left  on  the  prairie,  naked 
and  without  burial,  to  be  devoured  by  wild  beasts.  For 
force  of  will,  and  vast  conceptions;  for  various  knowledge, 
and  quick  adaptation  to  untried  circumstances  ;  for  energy 
of  purpose  and  unfaltering  hope,  —  this  daring  adventurer 
had  no  superior  among  his  countrymen.  He  won  the  affec- 
tion of  the  governor  of  Canada,  the  esteem  of  Colbert,  the 
confidence  of  Seignelay,  the  favor  of  Louis  XIY.  After 
beginning  the  occupation  of  Upper  Canada,  he  perfected 
the  discovery-  of  the  Mississippi  from  the  Falls  of  St.  An- 
thony to  its  mouth ;  and  he  is  remembered  as  the  father  of 
colonization  in  the  great  central  valley  of  the  west. 

But  avarice  and  passion  were  not  calmed  by  the  blood  of 
La  Salle.     Duhaut  and  another  of  the  assassins,  grasping  at 


1687.         FRANCE  AND   THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY.  343 

an  unequal  share  in  the  spoils,  were  themselves  murdered, 
while  their  reckless  associates  joined  a  band  of  savages. 
Joutel,  with  the  brother  and  surviving  nephew  of  La  Salle, 
and  others,  in  all  but  seven,  obtained  a  guide  to  the  Arkan- 
sas ;  and  fording  rivulets,  crossing  ravines,  by  rafts  or  boats 
of  buffalo  hides  making  a  ferry  over  rivers,  not  meeting  the 
cheering  custom  of  the  calumet  till  they  reached  the  country 
above  the  Red  River,  leaving  an  esteemed  companion  in  a 
wilderness  grave  on  which  the  piety  of  an  Indian  matron 
heaped  offerings  of  maize,  —  so  many  of  them  as  sur- 
vived came  upon  a  branch  of  the  Mississippi,  and  be-  juiy^24. 
held  on  an  island  a  large  cross.  Never  did  Christian 
gaze  on  that  emblem  with  heartier  joy.  Near  it  stood  a 
log  hut,  tenanted  by  two  Frenchmen.  Tonti  had  descended 
the  river,  and,  full  of  grief  at  not  finding  La  Salle,  had 
established  a  post  near  the  Arkansas. 


344  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIV. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

FRANCE  CONTENDS  FOR  THE  FISHERIES  AND  THE  GREAT 

"WEST. 

Such  were  the  events  which  gave  to  the  French  not  only 
New  France  and  Acadia,  Hudson's  Bay  and  Newfoundland, 
but  a  claim  to  a  moiety  of  Maine,  of  Vermont,  and  to  more 
than  a  moiety  of  New  York,  to  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi, 
and  to  Texas  even,  as  far  as  the  Rio  Bravo  del  Norte. 
Throughout  that  wide  region,  it  sought  to  introduce  its 
authority,  under  the  severest  forms  of  the  colonial  system. 
That  system  was  enforced,  with  equal  eagerness,  by  Eng- 
land upon  the  sea-coast.  Could  France  and  England  and 
Spain  have  amicably  divided  the  American  continent;  could 
they  have  been  partners,  and  not  rivals,  in  oppression, 
I  know  not  whence  hope  could  have  beamed  upon  the 
colonies. 

But  the  aristocratic  revolution  of  England  was  the  signal 
for  a  war  with  France,  growing  out  of  "  a  root  of  enmity," 
which  Marlborough  described  as  "  irreconcilable  to  the  gov- 
ernment and  the  religion  "  of  Great  Britain.  Louis  XIV. 
took  up  arms  in  defence  of  legitimacy ;  and  England  had  the 
glorious  office  of  asserting  the  right  of  a  nation  to  reform 
its  government.  But,  though  the  progress  of  the  revolu- 
tionary principle  was  the  root  of  the  enmity,  France  could 
not,  at  once,  obtain  the  alliance  of  every  European  po'Cver 
which  was  unfriendly  to  change.  She  had  encroached  on 
every  neighbor  ;  and  fear,  and  a  sense  of  wrong,  made  all 
of  them  her  enemies.  From  regard  to  the  integrity  of  its 
territory,  the  German  empire,  with  Austria,  joined  with 
England;  and,  as  the  Spanish  Netherlands,  which  consti- 
tuted the  barrier  of  Holland  and  Germany  against  France, 
and  the  path  of  England  into  the  heart  of  the  continent, 


1688.  RIVALRY  OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  345 

could  be  saved  from  conquest  by  France  only  through  the 
interposition  of  England  and  Holland,  an  alliance  foUoAved 
between  the  Protestant  revolutionary  republic  and  monarchy, 
on  the  one  side,  and  the  bigoted  defender  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  and  legitimacy,  on  the  other.  Hence,  also, 
in  the  first  war  of  King  William,  the  frontiers  of  Carolina, 
bordering  on  the  possessions  of  Spain,  were  safe  against  in- 
vasion :  Spain  and  England  were  allies. 

Thus  the  war  of  1689,  in  Europe,  roused  Louis  XIV.  in 
behalf  of  legitimacy,  and,  at  the  same  time,  rallied  against 
him,  not  England  only,  but  every  power  which  dreaded  his 
lawless  ambition.  William  III.  was  not  only  the  defender 
of  the  nationality  of  England,  but  of  the  territorial  freedom 
of  Europe. 

In  North  America,  the  battle  was  for  the  fisheries,  and  for 
territory  at  the  north  and  west.  The  idea  of  weakening 
an  adversary,  by  encouraging  its  colonies  to  assert  indepen- 
dence, did  not,  at  that  time,  exist ;  the  universal  maxim  of 
European  statesmanship  assumed  the  fact  that  they  must 
have  a  master.  In  the  contests  that  followed,  religious 
faith  and  roving  enterprise  secured  to  Louis  XIV.  the  active 
support  of  the  French  Canadians.  The  English  colonists 
sided  heartily  with  England :  the  English  revolution  was 
to  them  the  pledge  for  freedom  of  mind  as  marked  by 
Protestantism,  for  national  freedom  as  illustrated  in  the 
exile  of  a  tyrant  and  in  the  election  of  a  constitu- 
tional king.  Thus  the  strife  in  America  was  between  1689. 
England  and  France  for  the  possession  of  colonial 
monopolies ;  and,  in  that  strife,  England  rallied  her  forces 
under  the  standard  of  advancing  freedom. 

If  the  issue  had  depended  on  the  condition  of  the  colo- 
nies, it  could  hardly  have  seemed  doubtful.  The  French 
census  for  the  North  American  continent,  in  1688,  showed 
but  eleven  thousand  two  hundred  and  forty-nine  persons, 
scarcely  a  tenth  part  of  the  English  population  on  its  fron- 
tiers ;  about  a  twentieth  part  of  English  North  America. 

West  of  Montreal,  the  principal  French  posts,  and       1688. 
those  but  inconsiderable  ones,  were  at  Frontenac,  at 
Mackinaw,  and  on  the  Illinois.     At  Niagara,  there  was  a 


346  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIV. 

wavering  purpose  of  maintaining  a  post,  but  no  permanent 
occupation.  So  weak  were  the  garrisons,  that  English 
traders,  with  an  escort  of  Indians,  had  ventured  even  to 
Mackinaw,  and,  by  means  of  the  Senecas,  obtained  a  large 
share  of  the  commerce  of  the  lakes.     French  diplo- 

1687.  macy  had  attempted  to  pervade  the  west,  and  concert 
an  alliance  with  all  the  tribes  from  Lake  Ontario  to 

the  Mississippi.  The  traders  were  summoned  even  from 
the  plains  of  the  Sioux ;  and  Tonti  and  the  Illinois  were, 
by  way  of  the  Ohio  and  the  Alleghany,  to  precipitate  them- 
selves on  the  Senecas,  while  the  French  should  come  from 
Montreal,  and  the  Ottawas  and  other  Algonkins,  under 
Durantaye,  the  vigilant  commander  at  Mackinaw,  should 
descend  from  Michigan.  But  the  power  of  the  Illinois  was 
broken ;  the  Hurons  and  Ottawas  were  almost  ready  to 
become  the  allies  of  the  Senecas.     The  savages  still 

1688.  held  the  keys  of  the  great  west ;  no  intercourse  ex- 
isted but  by  means  of  the  forest  rangers,  who  pene- 
trated the  barren  heaths  round  Hudson's  Bay,  the  morasses 
of  the  north-west,  the  homes  of  the  Sioux  and  Miamis,  the 
recesses  of  every  forest  where  there  was  an  Indian  with 
skins  to  sell.  "  God  alone  could  have  saved  Canada  this 
year,"  wrote  Denonville,  in  1688.  But  for  the  missions  at 
the  west,  Illinois  would  have  been  abandoned,  and  the  fort 
at  Mackinaw  lost. 

Personal  enterprise  took  the  direction  of  the  fur- 

1689 

trade :  Port  Nelson,  in  Hudson's  Bay,  and  Fort  Al- 
bany, were  originally  possessed  by  the  French.  The  atten- 
tion of  the  court  of  France  was  directed  to  the  fisheries ; 
and  Acadia  had  been  represented  by  De  Meules  as  the 
most  important  settlement  of  France.  To  protect  it,  the 
Jesuits  Vincent  and  James  Bigot  collected  a  village  of 
Abenakis  on  the  Penobscot;  and  a  flourishing  town  now 
marks  the  spot  where  the  Baron  de  Saint-Castin,  a  veteran 
officer  of  the  regiment  of  Carignan,  established  a  trading- 
fort.  Would  France,  it  was  said,  strengthen  its  post  on 
the  Penobscot,  occupy  the  islands  that  command  the  Gulf 
of  St.  Lawrence,  and  send  supplies  to  Newfoundland,  she 
would  be  sole  mistress  of  the  fisheries  for  cod.     Hence  the 


i 


I 


1689.  RIVALRY  OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  347 

Strife  with  Massachusetts,  in  which  the  popular  mind  was 
so  deeply  interested  that,  to  this  day,  the  figure  of  a  cod- 
fish is  suspended  in  the  hall  of  its  representatives. 

Thus  France,  bounding  its  territory  next  New  England 
by  the  Kennebec,  claimed  New  England  east  of  that  river. 
Nova  Scotia,  Cape  Breton,  Newfoundland,  Labrador,  and 
Hudson's  Bay ;  and,  to  assert  and  defend  this  boundless 
region,  Acadia  and  its  dependencies  counted  but  nine  hun- 
dred French  inhabitants.  The  missionaries,  swaying  the 
mind  of  the  Abenakis,  gave  the  hope  of  savage  allies. 

On  the  declaration  of  war  by  France  against  Eng-    legg. 
land.  Count  Frontenac,  once  more  governor  of  Can-  "^^"^  ^^ 
ada,   was   charged   to   recover   Hudson's  Bay ;   to  protect 
Acadia ;  and,  by  a  descent  from  Canada,  to  assist  a  fleet 
from  France  in  making  conquest  of  New  York.     Of  that 
province  De  Callieres  was,  in  advance,  appointed  governor ; 
the   English   Catholics  were  to  be  permitted  to  re- 
main ;   other   inhabitants,   to  be  sent  into   Pennsyl-  Sept.  25. 
vania  or  New  England.     But,  on  reaching  the  Gulf 
of  St.  Lawrence,  Frontenac  learned  the  capture  of  Montreal. 

On  the  twenty-fifth  of  August,  the  Iroquois,  fifteen 
hundred  in  number,  reached  the  Isle  of  Montreal,  at  .  ' 
La  Chine,  at  break  of  day,  and,  finding  all  asleep,  set  fire 
to  the  houses,  and  engaged  in  one  general  massacre.  In 
less  than  an  hour,  two  hundred  people  met  death  under 
forms  too  horrible  for  description.  Approaching  Montreal, 
they  made  an  equal  number  of  prisoners  ;  and,  though  they 
never  were  masters  of  the  city,  they  roamed  unmolested 
over  the  island  till  the  middle  of  October.  In  the  moment 
of  consternation,  Denonville  ordered  Fort  Frontenac,  on 
Lake  Ontario,  to  be  evacuated  and  razed.  From  Three 
Rivers  to  Mackinaw,  there  remained  not  one  French  town, 
and  hardly  even  a  post. 

In  Hudson's  Bay,  a  band  of  brothers  —  De  Sainte  1689. 
H^lene  and  D'Iberville  —  sustained  the  honor  of 
French  arms.  They  were  Canadians,  sons  of  Charles  Le- 
moine,  an  early  emigrant  from  Normandy,  whose  numerous 
offspring  gave  to  American  history  the  name  of  Bien- 
ville.    Passing  across  the  ridge  that  divides  the  rivers  of 


348  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIV 

Hudson's  Bay  from  those  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  amidst 
marvellous  adventures,  by  hardy  resolution  and  daring 
presence  of  mind,  they  had,  in  1686,  conquered  the  posts 
of  the  English  from  Fort  Rupert  to  Albany  River,  leaving 
them  no  trading-house  in  the  bay,  except  that  of  which,  in 
1685,  they  had  dispossessed  the  French  at  Port  Nelson. 
That  post  remained  to  the  English  ;  but  the  sons  of  Lemoine 
intercepted  the  forces  which  were  sent  to  proclaim  William 
of  Orange  monarch  over  jagged  cliffs  and  deep  ravines 
never  warmed  by  a  sunbeam,  —  over  the  glaciers  and  moun- 
tains, the  rivers  and  trading-houses  in  Hudson's  Bay.  Ex- 
ulting in  their  success,  they  returned  to  Quebec. 

1689.  In  the  east,  blood  was  first  shed  at  Cocheco,  where, 
June  27.  thirteen  years  before,  an  unsuspecting  party  of  three 
hundred  and  fifty  Indians  had  been  taken  prisoners,  and 
shipped  for  Boston,  to  be  sold  into  foreign  slavery.  The 
memory  of  the  treachery  was  indelible ;  and  the  Indian 
emissaries  of  Castin  easily  excited  the  tribe  of  Penacook 
to  revenge.  On  the  evening  of  the  twenty-seventh  of  June, 
two  squaws  repaired  to  the  house  of  Richard  Waldron, 
and  the  octogenarian  magistrate  bade  them  lodge  on  the 
floor.  At  night,  they  rise,  unbar  the  gates,  and  summon 
their  companions,  who  at  once  enter  every  apartment. 
"  What  now  ?  what  now  ? "  shouted  the  brave  old  man ; 
and,  seizing  his  sword,  he  defended  himself  till  he  fell 
stunned  by  a  blow  from  a  hatchet.  They  then  placed  him 
in  a  chair  on  a  table  in  his  own  hall :  "  Judge  Indians 
again  !  "  thus  they  mocked  him  ;  and,  making  sport  of  their 
debts  to  him  as  a  trader,  they  drew  gashes  across  his 
breast,  and  each  one  cried  :  "  Thus  I  cross  out  my  account ! " 
At  last,  the  mutilated  man  reeled  from  faintness,  and  died 
in  the  midst  of  tortures.  The  Indians,  burning  his  house 
and  others  that  stood  near  it,  having  killed  three-and- 
twenty,  returned  to  the  wilderness  with  twenty-nine  cap- 
tives. 

August  comes.  The  women  <ind  children,  at  the  Penob- 
scot village  of  Canibas,  have  confessed  their  sins  to  the  priest 
Thury,  that  so  they  may  uplift  purer  hands,  while  their 
fathers  and  brothers  proceed  against  the  heretics;  in  the 


1690.  RIVALRY   OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  349 

little  chapel,  the  missionary  and  his  neophytes  have  estab- 
lished a  perpetual  rosary  during  the  expedition,  and  even 
the  hours  of  repast  do  not  interrupt  the  edifying  exercise. 
A  hundred  warriors,  purified  also  by  confession,  in  a  fleet 
of  bark  canoes,  steal  out  of  the  Penobscot,  and  paddle 
towards  Pemaquid.  Thomas  Gyles  and  his  sons  are  at 
work,  in  the  sunny  noontide,  making  hay  :  a  volley  whistles 
by  them  ;  a  short  encounter  ends  in  their  defeat.  "  I  ask 
no  favor,"  says  the  wounded  father,  "  but  leave  to  pray 
with  my  children."  Pale  with  the  loss  of  blood,  he  com- 
mends his  children  to  God,  then  bids  them  farewell  for  this 
world,  yet  in  the  hope  of  seeing  them  in  a  better.  The 
Indians,  restless  at  delay,  use  the  hatchet,  and,  for  burial, 
heap  boughs  over  his  body.  After  a  defence  of  two  days, 
the  stockade  at  Pemaquid  capitulates ;  and  the  warriors 
return  to  Penobscot  to  exult  over  their  prisoners.  Other 
inroads  were  made  by  the  Penobscot  and  St.  John  Indians, 
80  that  the  settlements  east  of  Falmouth  were  deserted. 

In  September,  commissioners  from  New  England  held 
a  conference  with  the  Mohawks  at  Albany,  soliciting  an 
alliance.  "  We  have  burnt  Montreal,"  said  they  ;  "  we  are 
allies  of  the  English  ;  we  will  keep  the  chain  unbroken. " 
But  they  refused  to   invade  the  Abenakis. 

Had  Frontenac  never  left  New  France,  Montreal  would 
probably  have  been  safe.  He  now  used  every  effort  to  win 
the  Five  Nations  to  neutrality  or  to  friendship.  To  re- 
cover esteem  in  their  eyes;  to  secure  to  Durantaye,  the 
commander  at  Mackinaw,  the  means  of  treating  with  the 
Hurons  and  the  Ottawas,  it  was  resolved  by  Frontenac  to 
make  a  triple  descent  into  the  English  provinces. 

From  Montreal,  a  party  of  one  hundred  and  ten,  1(590. 
composed  of  French  and  of  the  Christian  Iroquois,  —  *^**" 
having  De  Mantet  and  Sainte  Ileldne  as  leaders,  and  D'lber- 
ville,  the  hero  of  Hudson's  Bay,  as  a  volunteer,  —  for  two- 
and-twenty  days  waded  through  snows  and  morasses,  through 
forests  and  across  rivers,  to  Schenectady.  The  village  had 
given  itself  calmly  to  slumber :  at  its  open  and 
unguarded  gates  the  invaders  entered  silently,  and  Feb.  8. 
having,  just  before  midnight,  reached  its  heart,  the 


350  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIV. 

war-whoop  was  raised  —  dreadful  sound  to  the  mothers  of 
that  place  and  their  children!  —  and  the  dwellings  set  on 
fire.  Of  the  inhabitants,  some,  half-clad,  fled  through  the 
snows  to  Albany;  sixty  were  massacred,  of  whom  seven- 
teen were  children  and  ten  were  Africans.  For  such  ends 
had  the  hardships  of  a  winter's  expedition,  frost,  famine, 
and  frequent  deaths,  been  encountered. 

The  party  from  Three  Rivers,  led  by  Hertel  de  Rouville, 
consisting  of  fifty-two  persons,  of  whom  three  were 
Mar^27.  ^^^  ^^^^  ^^^  ^^^  ^^^  nephews,  surprised  the  settle- 
ment at  Salmon  Falls,  on  the  Piscataqua,  and,  after 
a  bloody  engagement,  burned  houses,  barns,  and  cattle  in 
the  stalls,  and  took  fifty-four  prisoners,  chiefly  women  and 
children.  The  prisoners  were  laden  by  the  victors  with 
spoils  from  their  own  homes.  Robert  Rogers,  rejecting  his 
burden,  was  bound  by  the  Indians  to  a  tree,  and  dry  leaves 
kindled  about  him,  yet  in  such  heaps  as  would  burn  but 
slowly.  Mary  Furguson,  a  girl  of  fifteen,  burst  into  tears 
from  fatigue,  and  was  scalped  forthwith.  Mehetabel  Good- 
win lingered  apart  in  the  snow  to  lull  her  infant  to  sleep, 
lest  its  cries  should  provoke  the  savages :  angry  at  her 
delay,  her  master  struck  the  child  against  a  tree,  and  hung 
it  among  the  branches.  The  infant  of  Mary  Plaisted  was 
thrown  into  the  river,  that,  eased  of  her  burden,  she  might 
walk  faster. 

Returning  from  this  expedition,  Hertel  met  the  war- 
party,  under  Portneuf,  from  Quebec,  and,  with  them  and  a 
re-enforcement  from  Castin,  made  a  successful  attack  on  the 
fort  and  settlement  in  Casco  Bay. 

Meantime,  danger  taught  the  colonies  the  necessity  of 
union.  In  March,  1690,  the  idea  of  a  colonial  "congress," 
familiar  from  the  times  when  wars  with  the  Susquehannahs 
brought  agents  of  Virginia  and  Maryland  to  New  York, 
arose  at  Albany.  On  the  eighteenth  of  that  month,  letters 
were  despatched  from  the  general  court  of  Massachusetts 
"  to  the  several  governors  of  the  neighboring  colonies, 
desiring  them  to  appoint  commissioners  to  meet  at  Rhode 
Island  on  the  last  Monday  in  April  next,  there  to  advise 
and  conclude  on  suitable  methods  in  assisting  each  other  for 


1690.  RIVALRY   OF  FRANCE   AND  ENGLAND.  351 

the  safety  of  the  whole  land,  and  that  the  governor  of  New 
York  be  desired  to  signify  the  same  to  Maryland,  and  parts 
adjacent."  Leisler  heartily  favored  the  design  ;  the  place 
of  meeting  was  changed  to  New  York ;  and  there,  on  the 
first  day  of  May,  commissioners  from  Massachusetts,  Ply- 
mouth, Connecticut,  and  New  York,  each  of  which  had  at 
that  time  a  self-constituted  government,  came  together  by 
their  own  independent  acts.  In  that  assembly,  it  was  re- 
solved to  attenjpt  the  conquest  of  Canada  by  sending  an 
army  over  Lake  Champlain,  against  Montreal,  while  Massa- 
chusetts should  attack  Quebec  with  a  fleet.  Prepar- 
ing the  forms  of  independence  and  union,  the  colonies  i69o. 
which  were  present  in  the  meeting  not  only  pro- 
vided for  order  and  tranquillity  at  home,  but  of  themselves 
planned  the  invasion  of  Acadia  and  Canada. 

Acadia  was  soon  conquered  ;  before  the  end  of  May,  Sir 
William  Phips  sailed  to  Port  Royal,  which  readily  surren- 
dered. New  England  became  mistress  of  the  coast  to  the 
eastern  extremity  of  Nova  Scotia,  though  the  native  hordes 
of  that  wilderness  still  retained  their  affection  for  the  French. 

While  the  people  of  New  England  and  New  York  were 
concerting  the  grand  enterprise  of  the  reduction  of  Canada, 
the  French  had,  by  their  successes,  inspired  the  savages  with 
respect,  and  renewed  their  intercourse  with  the  west.  But, 
in  August,  Montreal  became  alarmed.  An  Indian  announces 
that  an  army  of  Iroquois  and  English  was  busy  in  construct- 
ing canoes  on  Lake  George ;  and  immediately  Frontenac 
himself  placed  the  hatchet  in  the  hands  of  his  allies,  and, 
with  the  tomahawk  in  his  own  grasj),  old  as  he  was,  chanted 
the  war-song  and  danced  the  war-dance.  On  the  twenty- 
ninth  of  August,  it  was  said  that  an  army  had  reached  Lake 
Champlain ;  but,  on  the  second  of  September,  the  spies 
could  observe  no  trail.  The  projected  attack  by  land  was 
defeated  by  divisions ;  Leisler  charging  Winthrop  of  Con- 
necticut with  treachery,  and  the  forces  from  Connecticut 
blaming  Milborne,  the  commissary  of  New  York,  for  the 
insufficiency  of  the  supplies. 

But  just  as  Frontenac,  in  the  full  pride  of  security,  Oct.  lo. 
was  preparing  to  return  to  Quebec,  he  heard  that  an 


352  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIV. 

Abenaki,  hurrying  through  the  woods  in  twelve  days  from 
Piscataqua,  had  announced  the  approach  of  a  hostile  fleet 
from  Boston.  The  little  colony  of  Massachusetts  had  sent 
forth  a  fleet  of  thirty-four  sail,  under  the  command  of  the 
incompetent  Phips,  manned  by  two  thousand  of  its  citizens, 
who,  as  they  now  without  pilots  sounded  their  way  up 
the  St.  Lawrence,  anxious  for  the  result  of  the  expedition 
against  Montreal,  watched  wistfully  the  course  of  the 
winds,  and  hoped  in  the  efiicacy  of  the  prayers  that  went 
up,  evening  and  morning,  from  every  hearth  in  New 
England. 

Had  the  excursion  from  Albany  by  land  succeeded, — 
had  pilots,  or  fair  winds,  or  decision  in  the  commander, 
conducted  the  fleet  more  rapidly  but  by  three  days,  —  the 
castle  of  St.  Louis  would  have  been  surprised  and  taken. 
But,  in  the  night  of  the  fourteenth  of  October,  Frontenac 
reached  Quebec.  The  inhabitants  of  the  vicinity  were 
assembled ;  and  the  fortifications  of  the  city  had  already 
been  put  in  a  tenable  condition,  when,  on  the  sixteenth,  at 
daybreak,  the  fleet  from  Boston  came  in  sight,  and  soon  cast 
anchor  near  Beauport,  in  the  stream.  It  was  too  late.  The 
herald  from  the  ship  of  the  admiral,  demanding  a  surrender 
of  the  place,  was  dismissed  with  scoffs.     What  availed  the 

courage  of  the  citizen  soldiers  who  effected  a  landing 

Qg^  1*8.  at   Beauport?     Before  them  was   a  fortified   town 

^'  defended  by  a  garrison  far  more  numerous  than  the 

assailants,  and  protected  by  marshes  and  a  river  fordable 

only  at  low  tide.  The  diversion  against  Montreal  had 
Oct.  j 2};  utterly  failed:  the  New  England  men  re-embarked, 

and  sailed  for  Boston.  In  Quebec  there  were  great 
rejoicings.  The  church  of  Our  Lady  of  Victory  was  built 
in  the  lower  town  in  commemoration  of  the  victory ;  and 
in  France  a  medal  was  struck  in  honor  of  the  successes  of 
Louis  XIY.  in  the  New  World.  The  New  England  ships, 
on  their  return,  were  scattered  by  storms  :  of  one,  bearing 
sixty  men,  wrecked  on  Anticosti,  five  of  the  few  who  did 
not  perish  from  the  cold,  boldest  of  navigators,  landed  in 
Boston  in  the  following  May,  after  a  voyage  of  forty-four 
days  in  a  skiff.    Sir  William  Phips  reached  home  in  Novem- 


I 


1694.  RIVALRY  OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  353 

ber.  The  treasury  was  empty.  "  Considering  the 
present  poverty  of  the  country,  and,  through  scarcity  Dec.^io. 
of  money,  the  want  of  an  adequate  measure  of  com- 
merce," issues  of  bills  of  credit  were  authorized,  in  notes  from 
five  shillings  to  five  pounds,  to  "be  in  value  equal  to  money, 
and  accepted  in  all  public  payments."  But,  as  confidence 
wavered,  the  bills  of  the  colony,  which  continued  to  be 
issued,  were  made  in  all  payments  a  legal  tender,  and, 
instead  of  bearing  interest,  were  received  at  the  treasury  at 
five  per  cent  advance. 

Repulsed   from    Canada,   the    exhausted    colonies    icoi  to 
attempted  little  more  than  the  defence  of  their  fron-      ^^^^ 
tiers.      Their  borders  were  full  of   terror  and  sorrow,  of 
captivity  and  death  ;  but  no  designs  of  conquest  were 
formed.      If   Schuyler   made   an  irruption   into   the       i69i. 
French  settlements  on  the  Sorel,  it  was  only  to  gain 
successes  in  a  skirmish,  and  to  effect  a  safe  retreat. 
A  French  ship  anchoring  in  Port  Royal,  the  red  cross  Nov.  26. 
that  floated  over  the  town  made  way  for  the  banner 
of  France  ;  and  Acadia  was  once  more  a  dependence 
on  Canada.     In  January,  1692,  a  party  of  French  and       i692. 
Indians,  coming  in  snow-shoes  from  the   east,  burst  - 
upon  the  town  of  York,  offering  its  inhabitants  no  choice 
but  captivity  or  death.    The  fort  which  was  rebuilt  at  Pema- 
quid  was,  at  least,  an  assertion  of  English  supremacy  over 
the  neighboring  region.     In  England,  the  conquest  of  Can- 
ada was  resolved  on  ;  but  the  fleet  designed  for  the 
expedition,  after  a  repulse  at  Martinique,  sailed  for       i693. 
Boston,  freighted  with  the  yellow  fever,  which  de- 
stroyed two  thirds  of  the  mariners  and  soldiers  on 
board.     For  a  season,  hostilities  in  Maine  were  sus-  Aug.  u. 
pended  by  a  treaty  of  peace  with  the  Abenakis ;  but 
in  less  than  a  year,  solely  through  the  influence  of 
the  Jesuits,  they  were  again  in  the  field,  led  by  Vil-  j^^y^ig. 
lieu,  the  French  commander  on  the  Penobscot ;  and 
the  village  at  Oyster  River,  in  New  Hampshire,   was  the 
victim  of  their  fury.     Ninety-four  persons  were  killed  and 
carried  away.     The  young  wife  of  Thomas  Drew  was  taken 
to  the  tribe  at  Norridgewock  :  there,  in  midwinter,  in  the 
VOL.  u.  23 


354  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIV. 

open  air,  during  a  storm  of  snow,  she  gave  birth  to  her  first- 
born, doomed  by  the  savages  to  instant  death.  In  Canada, 
the  chiefs  of  the  IMicmaes  presented  to  Frontenac  the  scalps 
of  English  killed  on  the  Piscataqua.  Nor  did  the  thought 
occur  that  such  inroads  were  atrocious.  The  Jesuit  his- 
torian of  France  relates,  with  pride,  that  they  had  their 
origin  in  the  counsels  and  influence  of  the  missionaries 
Thury  and  Bigot ;  and,  extolling  the  hardihood  and  the 
success  of  the  foray,  he  passes  a  eulogy  on  the  daring  of 
Taxus,  the  bravest  of  the  Abenakis.  Such  is  self-love  :  it 
has  but  one  root,  with  a  thousand  branches.  The  despot 
believed  his  authority  from  God  and  his  own  personality  to 
constitute  the  state  ;  the  mistresses  of  kings  were,  without 
scruple,  made  by  patent  the  mothers  of  hereditary  legis- 
lators; the  English  monopolist  had  no  self-reproach  for 
prohibiting  the  industry  of  the  colonists ;  Louis  XIY., 
James  II.,  and  his  successors.  Queen  Anne,  Bolingbroke, 
and  Lady  Masham,  thought  it  no  harm  to  derive  money 
from  the  slave-trade  ;  and,  in  the  pages  of  Charlevoix,  the 
unavailing  cruelties  of  midnight  incendiaries,  the  murder 
and  scalping  of  the  inhabitants  of  peaceful  villages,  and  the 
captivity  of  helpless  women  and  children,  are  diffusely  nar- 
rated as  actions  that  were  brave  and  beautiful. 

1697.  Once,  indeed,   a  mother  achieved  a  startling  re- 

Mar.  15.  yeuge.  Seven  days  after  her  confinement,  the  Indian 
prowlers  raised  their  shouts  near  the  house  of  Hannah 
Dustin,  of  Haverhill :  her  husband  rode  home  from  the 
field,  but  too  late  to  provide  for  her  rescue.  He  must  fly, 
if  he  would  save  even  one  of  his  seven  children,  who  had 
hurried  before  him  into  the  forest.  But,  from  the  cowering 
flock,  how  could  a  father  make  a  choice?  With  gun  in  his 
hand,  he  now  repels  the  assault,  now  cheers  on  the  inno- 
cent group  of  little  ones,  as  they  rustle  through  the  dried 
leaves  and  bushes,  till  all  reach  a  shelter.  The  Indians 
burned  his  home,  and  dashed  his  infant  against  a  tree; 
and,  after  days  of  weary  marches,  Hannah  Dustin  and  her 
nurse,  with  a  boy  from  Worcester,  find  themselves  on  an 
island  in  the  Merrimack,  just  above  Concord,  in  a  wigwam 
occupied  by  two   Indian  families.      The  mother  planned 


1693.  RIVALKY  OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  355 

escape.  "  Where  would  you  strike,"  said  the  boy,  Samuel 
Leonardson,  to  his  master,  "to  kill  instantly?"  and  the  In- 
dian told  him  where,  and  how  to  scalp.  At  night,  while 
the  household  slumbers,  the  captives,  two  women  and  a 
boy,  each  with  a  tomahawk,  strike  vigorously  and  fleetly, 
and  with  wise  division  of  labor  ;  and,  of  the  twelve  sleepers, 
ten  lie  dead ;  of  one  squaw  the  wound  was  not  mortal ;  one 
child  was  spared  from  design.  The  love  of  glory  next  as- 
serted its  power ;  and  the  gun  and  tomahawk  of  the  mur- 
derer of  her  infant,  and  a  bag  heaped  full  with  scalps,  were 
choicely  kept  as  the  trophies  of  the  heroine.  The  streams  are 
the  guides  which  God  has  set  for  the  stranger  in  the  wilder- 
ness :  in  a  bark  canoe,  the  three  descended  the  Merrimack 
to  the  English  settlements,  astonishing  their  friends  by 
their  escape,  and  filling  the  land  with  wonder  at  their 
daring  deed. 

Such  scenes  had  no  influence  on  the  question  of  bounda- 
ries between  Canada  and  New  England.  In  the  late  sum- 
mer of  1696,  the  fort  of  Pemaquid  was  taken  by  D'Iberville 
and  Castin.  The  frontier  of  French  dominion  was  extended 
into  the  heart  of  Maine ;  and  Acadia  was,  for  a  season,  se- 
cured to  the  countrymen  of  De  Monts  and  Champlain. 

In  the  west,  after  the  hope  of  conquering  Canada  was 
abandoned  by  the  English,  Frontenac  had  little  strife  but 
with  the  Five  Nations,  whom  he  alternately  by  missions  and 
treaties  endeavored  to  win,  and  by  invasions  to  terrify  into 
an  alliance.  In  February,  1692,  three  hundred  French,  with 
Indian  confederates,  were  sent  over  the  snows  against  the 
hunting-parties  of  the  Senecas  in  Upper  Canada,  1693. 
near  the  Niagara.  In  the  following  year,  a  larger  ^J;J- 
party  invaded  the  country  of  the  Mohawks,  bent  on  ^^b. 
their  extermination.  The  first  castle,  and  the  second  also, 
fell  easily,  —  for  the  war-chiefs  were  absent ;  at  the  third, 
a  party  of  forty,  who  were  dancing  a  war-dance,  gave  battle, 
and  victory  cost  the  invaders  thirty  men.  The  governor 
of  Montreal  had  ordered  no  quarter  to  be  given,  unless  to 
women  and  children ;  but  the  savage  confederates  insisted 
on  showing  mercy ;  and  the  French  historian  censures  their 
humanity  "as  inexcusable;"  for  Schuyler,  of  Albany,  col- 


356  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIV. 

lecting  two  hundred    men,  and  pursuing   the  party  as  it 
retired,  succeeded  in  liberating  many  of  the  captives. 

Nor  did  the  Five  Nations  continue  their  control 

1695.  .  „  Ml      • 
over  western  commerce.      Alter  many  vacillations, 

the  prudence  of  the  memorable  La  Motte  Cadillac,  who 

had  been  appointed  governor  at  Mackinaw,  confirmed  the 

friendship  of  the  neighboring  tribes ;  and  a  party  of  Otta- 

was,  Pottawatomies,  and  Chippewas,  surprised  and  routed 

a  band  of  Iroquois,  returning  with  piles  of  beaver  and  scalps 

as  trophies. 

At  this  time,  a  messenojer  from  Montreal  brought 

1696.  '  o  o 

tidings  of  extensive  preparations  for  ravaging  the 
whole  country  of  the  Five  Nations ;  but  the  Indians  of  the 
west  would  not  rally  under  the  banner  of  France ;  and  the 
French  of  Canada,  aided  only  by  their  immediate   allies, 
made  their  last  invasion  of  Western  New  York.    Frontenac, 
then  seventy-four  years  of  age,  himself  conducted  the 
July  28.  army  :  from  the  fort  which  bore  his  name,  they  passed 
over  to  Oswego,  and  occupied  both  sides  of  that  river ; 
at  night,  they  reached  the  falls  three  leagues  above  its  mouth, 
and,  by  the  light  of  bark  torches,  they  dragged  the  canoes 
and  boats  above  the  portage.    As  they  advanced,  they  found 
the  savage  defiance,  in  two  bundles  of  reeds,  suspended  on 
a  tree ;  a  sign  that  fourteen  hundred  and  thirty-four  war- 
riors (such  was  the  number  of  reeds)  defied  them.    As 
Aug.       they  approached  the  great  village  of  the  Onondagas, 
that  nation  set  fire  to  it,  and,  by  night,  the  invaders 
beheld  the  glare  of  the  burning  wigwams.     Early  in 
Aug.  3.    August,  the  army  encamped  near  the  Salt  Springs, 
while  a  party  was  sent  to  ravage  the  country  of  the 
Oneidas,  with  orders  to  cut  up  their  corn,  burn  their  vil- 
lages, put  to  death  all  who  should  offer  resistance, 
Aug.  8.    and  take  six  chiefs  as  hostages.     Meantime,  an  aged 
Onondaga  captive,  who  had  refused  to  fly,  was  aban- 
doned to  the  fury  of  the  allies  of  the  French.     All  the  tor- 
tures that  more  than  four  hundred  savages  could  inflict. on 
the  decrepit  old  man  extorted  from  him  not  one  word  of 
weakness :  he  scofled  always  at  his  tormentors  as  the  slaves 
of  those  whom  he  despised.     On  receiving  mortal  wounds, 


1697.  RIVALRY  OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  357 

his  last  words  were  :  "  You  should  have  taken  more  time  to 
learn  how  to  meet  death  manfully !  I  die  contented ;  for  I 
have  no  cause  for  self-reproach."  Such  scenes  were  enacted 
at  Salina. 

After  these  successes  against  the  Onondagas  and  Oneidas, 
it  was  proposed  to  go  against  the  Cayugas,  but  Frontenac 
refused,  as  if  uncertain  of  the  result :  "  It  was  time  for  him 
to  repose ; "  and  the  army  returned  to  Montreal.  He  had 
humbled,  but  not  subdued,  the  Five  Nations,  and  left  them 
to  suffer  from  a  famine,  yet  to  recover  their  lands  and  their 
spirit ;  having  pushed  hostilities  so  far  that  no  negotiations 
for  peace  could  easily  succeed. 

The  last  year  of  the  war  was  one  of  especial  alarm,  i697. 
as  rumor  divulged  the  purpose  of  the  French  king  to 
send  out  a  powerful  fleet  to  devastate  the  coast  of  New 
England,  and  to  conquer  New  York.  But  nothing  came  of 
it ;  and  the  peace  of  Ryswick  occasioned,  at  least,  a  sus- 
pension of  hostilities,  though  not  till  the  English  exchequer 
had  been  recruited  by  means  of  a  great  change  in  the  inter- 
nal and  the  financial  policy  of  England.  It  accepted  from 
individuals  a  loan  of  one  and  a  half  million  pounds  sterling, 
paying  for  it  eight  per  cent  per  annum,  and  consti- 
tuting the  subscribers  to  the  loan  an  incorporated  um. 
bank  of  circulation.  The  measure  extorted  a  reluc- 
tant assent  from  the  financial  wants  of  the  government ; 
but,  in  its  character,  it  was  in  harmony  with  the  principles 
of  the  aristocratic  revolution  of  England.  The  Bank  of 
England,  a  privileged  body,  became  the  mediator  between 
the  government  and  the  moneyed  interest. 

The  peace  of  Ryswick  was  itself  a  victory  of  the  1697. 
spirit  of  reform  ;  for  Louis  XIV.,  with  James  II.  at  ^^^^' 
his  court,  recognised  the  revolutionary  sovereign  of  Eng- 
land ;  and  the  encroachments  of  France  on  the  German 
empire  were  restrained.  In  America,  France  retained  all 
Hudson's  Bay,  and  all  the  places  of  which  she  was  in  pos- 
session at  the  beginning  of  the  war;  in  other  words,  with 
the  exception  of  the  eastern  moiety  of  Newfoundland, 
France  retained  the  whole  coast  and  adjacent  islands,  from 
Maine  to  beyond  Labrador  and  Hudson's  Bay,  besides  Can- 


358  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIV. 

ada  and  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi.  But  the  boundary- 
lines  were  reserved  as  subjects  for  wrangling  among  com- 
missioners. 

On  the  east,  England  claimed  to  the  St.  Croix,  and 

France  to  the  Kennebec ;  and,  had  peace  continued, 
the  St.  George  would  have  been  adopted  as  a  compromise. 

The  boundary  between  New  France  and  New  York  was 
still  more  difficult  of  adjustment.  Delius,  the  envoy  from 
New  York,  included  in  that  province  all  the  country  of  the 
Five  Nations,  and  declared  openly,  at  Montreal,  that  the 
countries  at  the  west,  even  Mackinaw,  belonged  to  England. 
This  extravagant  assertion  was  treated  with  derision  :  the 
French,  moreover,  themselves  laid  claim  to  the  lands  of  the 
Five  Nations.  In  the  negotiations  for  the  restoration  of 
prisoners,  Bellomont  sought  to  obtain  an  acknowledgment 
that  the  Iroquois  were  subject  to  England  ;  but  the  Count 
de  Frontenac  referred  the  matter  to  the  commissioners  to 
be  appointed  under  the  treaty  of  Ryswick.  "  That  the  Five 
Nations  were  always  considered  subjects  of  England,"  said 

Bellomont,  "  can  be  manifested  to  all  the  world ; " 
1697.       but  De    Callieres,  sending   ambassadors   directly  to 

Onondaga  to  regulate  the  exchange  of  prisoners, 
avoided  an  immediate  decision.  The  Iroquois  were  proud 
of  their  independence.  Religious  sympathies  inclined  them 
to  the  French,  but  commercial  advantages  brought  them 
always  into  connection  with  the  English.  As  the  influence 
of  the  Jesuits  gave  to  France  its  only  power  over  the  Five 
Nations,  the  legislature  of  New  York,  in  1700,  made  a  law 
for  hanging  every  popish  priest  that  should  come  volunta- 
rily into  the  province.  "  The  law  ought  for  ever  to  con- 
tinue in  force,"  is  the  commentary  of  an  early  historian  of 
the  province. 

After  many  collisions  and  acts  of  hostility  between 

1700. 

the  Iroquois  and  the  allies  of  the  French,  especially 
the  Ottawas  ;  after  many  ineffectual  attempts,  on  the  part 
of  Lord  Bellomont,  to  constitute  himself  the  arbiter  of 
peace,  and  thus  to  obtain  an  acknowledged  ascendency,  —  the 

four  upper  nations,  in  the  summer  of  1700,  sent  en- 
^    '  voys   to   Montreal   "to   weep   for   the  French  who 


170].  RIVALRY  OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  359 

had  died  in  the  war."  After  rapid  negotiations,  peace 
was  ratified  between  the  Iroquois,  on  the  one  side,  and 
France  and  her  Indian  allies,  on  the  other.  The  Rat,  chief 
of  the  Huron s  from  Mackinaw,  said  :  "I  lay  down  the  axe 
at  ray  father's  feet ; "  and  the  deputies  of  the  four  tribes  of 
Ottawas  echoed  his  words.  The  envoy  of  the  Abenakis 
said :  "  I  have  no  hatchet  but  that  of  my  father,  and,  since 
my  father  has  buried  it,  now  I  have  none ;  "  the  Christian 
Iroquois,  allies  of  France,  assented.  A  written  treaty  was 
made,  to  which  each  nation  placed  for  itself  a  symbol :  the 
Senecas  and  Onondagas  drew  a  spider ;  the  Cayugas,  a 
calumet ;  the  Oneidas,  a  forked  stick ;  the  Mohawks,  a 
bear ;  the  Hurons,  a  beaver ;  the  Abenakis,  a  deer ;  and  the 
Ottawas,  a  hare.  It  was  further  declared  that  war  should 
cease  between  the  French  allies  and  the  Sioux  ;  that  peace 
should  reach  beyond  the  Mississippi.  As  to  limits  in 
Western  New  York,  De  Callieres,  becoming  governor- 
general,  proposed  to  the  French  minister  to  assert  French 
jurisdiction  over  the  land  of  the  Iroquois,  or  at  least  to 
establish  its  neutrality. 

The  question  remained  undecided,  and,  through  1701. 
the  Five  Nations,  England  shared  in  the  Indian  trade 
of  the  west ;  but  France  kept  the  mastery  of  the  great  lakes, 
and  De  Callieres  resolved  to  secure  it  by  establishing 
a  post.  The  Five  Nations,  by  their  deputies,  remon-  Mar.  2. 
strated,  but  in  vain ;  and  in  the  month  of  June,  1701, 
De  la  Motte  Cadillac,  with  a  Jesuit  missionary  and  one 
hundred  Frenchmen,  was  sent  to  take  possession  of  Detroit. 
This  is  the  oldest  permanent  settlement  in  Michigan.  That 
commonwealth  began  to  be  colonized  before  Georgia,  or  any 
one  of  the  inland  states,  except,  perhaps,  Illinois.  The  coun- 
try on  the  Detroit  River  and  Lake  St.  Clair  charmed  tliose 
who  came  from  Lower  Canada.  Two  numerous  Indian  vil- 
lages gathered  near  the  fort ;  here  were  the  wigwams  of  the 
Hurons,  who  had  fled  from  their  old  country,  first  to  the 
Falls  of  St.  Mary,  and  then  to  Mackinaw ;  and  above,  on 
the  right,  in  Upper  Canada,  rose  a  settlement  of  the  Otta- 
was, their  inseparable  companions. 

The  military  occupation  of  Illinois  seems  to  have  con- 


860  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIV. 

1681.  tinued,  without  interruption,  from  the  time  when  La 
Salle  returned  from  Fort  Frontenac.  Joutel  found 
a  garrison  at  Fort  St.  Louis  in  1687 ;  in  1689,  La  Hontan 
bears  testimony  that  it  still  continued ;  in  1696,  a  public 
document  proves  its  existence,  and  the  wish  of  Louis  XIV. 
to  preserve  it  in  good  condition  ;  and  when,  in  1700, 
1700.  Tonti  again  descended  the  Mississippi,  he  was  at- 
tended by  twenty  Canadian  residents  in  Illinois. 
The  oldest  permanent  European  settlement  in  the  valley 
of  the  Mississippi  is  the  village  of  the  Immaculate  Concep- 
tion of  the  Holy  Virgin,  or  Kaskaskia,  the  seat  of  a  Jesuit 
mission.  Marquette  founded  the  mission  of  that  name 
when  the  tribe  dwelt  on  the  upper  waters  of  the  Illinois. 
He  had  been  followed  by  Allouez,  who,  in  1684,  may  have 
been  at  Rock  Fort,  but  who  was  chiefly  a  missionary  to  the 
Miamis,  among  whom  he  died.  Gravier  came  after  Alloiiez, 
but  in  what  year  is  unknown.  Sebastian  Rasles,  after  a 
short  residence  among  the  Abenakis,  received  orders  to 
visit  the  west ;  and,  from  his  own  narrative,  it  is  plain  that, 
after  passing  a  winter  at  Mackinaw,  he,  in  the  spring  of 
1693,  repaired  to  Illinois,  where  he  remained  two  years  be- 
fore exchanging  its  prairies  for  the  borders  of  the  Kennebec. 
Gravier  is  famed  as  having  been  the  first  to  ascertain  the 
principles  of  the  Illinois  language,  and  to  reduce  them  to 
rules ;  and  as  having,  in  the  midst  of  perpetual  perils  and 
opposition  from  sorcerers,  succeeded  in  transferring  the 
mission  which  Marquette  had  established  among  the  Kas- 
kaskias  to  the  spot  between  the  Illinois  and  the  Mississippi, 
where  it  was  destined  to  endure. 

When  the  founder  of  Kaskaskia  was  recalled  to  Mack- 
inaw, he  was  relieved  by  two  missionaries :  by  Pinet,  who 
became  the  founder  of  Cahokia,  preaching  with  such  suc- 
cess that  his  chapel  could  not  contain  the  multitude  that 
thronged  to  him ;  and  Binnetau,  who  left  his  jnission  among 
the  Abenakis  to  die  on  the  plains  of  the  Mississippi.  Hav- 
ing followed  the  tribe  to  which  he  was  attached,  in  their 
July  ramble  over  their  widest  hunting-grounds,  —  now  sti- 
fled amongst  the  tall  grasses,  now  panting  with  thirst  on 
dry  prairies,  all  day  tortured  with  heat,  all  night  exposed 


1700.  RIVALRY  OF  FRANCE  AND   ENGLAND.  361 

on  the  ground  to  chilling  dews,  —  he  was  seized  with  a 
mortal  fever,  and  left  his  bones  on  the  wilderness  range  of 
the  buffaloes. 

Before  his  death,  and  before  Tonti  left  Illinois,  Gabriel 
Marest,  the  Jesuit,  —  who,  after  chanting  an  ave  to  the 
cross  among  the  icebergs  of  Hudson's  Bay,  had  been  taken 
by  the  English,  and,  on  his  liberation  at  the  peace,  had  re- 
turned by  way  of  France  to  America,  —  joined  the  mission 
at  Kaskaskia,  and,  for  a  season,  after  the  death  of  Binnetau 
and  Pinet,  had  the  sole  charge  of  it.  Very  early  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  he  was  joined  by  Mermet.  It  was 
Mermet  who  assisted  the  commandant  Jucherau,  from  Can- 
ada, in  collecting  a  village  of  Indians  and  Canadians,  and 
thus  founding  the  first  French  post  on  the  Ohio,  or,-^as  the 
lower  part  of  that  river  was  then  called,  the  Wabash.  But 
a  contagious  disease  invaded  the  mixed  population ;  the 
Indians,  with  extravagant  ceremonies,  sacrificed  forty  dogs 
to  appease  their  manitou ;  and,  when  they  began  to  appre- 
hend that  the  manitou  of  the  French  was  more  powerful 
than  their  own,  the  medicine  men  would  walk  round  the 
fort  in  circles,  crying  out :  "  We  are  dead  :  gently,  manitou 
of  the  French,  strike  gently ;  do  not  kill  us  all.  Good-manitou, 
master  of  life  and  death,  leave  death  within  thy  coffer  ; 
give  life."  Thus  they  prayed ;  but  the  dreadful  mortality 
broke  up  the  settlement. 

About  the  same  time,  Gravier  returned  to  Illinois  to  plant 
a  mission  near  Rock  Fort,  which  had  been  abandoned  by 
Tonti.  Here  he  was  unsuccessful,  falling  a  victim  to  the 
assaults  of  the  natives  ;  but,  on  the  banks  of  the  Missisvsippi, 
the  settlements  slowly  increased.  The  more  hardy  services 
of  the  mission  fell  to  the  lot  of  Marest.  "Our  life,"  he 
writes,  "  is  passed  in  roaming  through  thick  woods,  in  clam- 
bering over  hills,  in  paddling  the  canoe  across  lakes  and 
rivers,  to  catch  a  poor  savage  who  flies  from  us,  and  whom 
we  can  tame  neither  by  teachings  nor  by  caresses." 

In  1711,  on  Good  Friday,  Marest  started  for  the  Peorias, 
who  desired  a  new  mission.  In  two  days  he  reached  Caho- 
kia.  "I  departed,"  he  writes  again,  "having  nothing  about 
me  but  my  crucifix  and  my  breviary,  being  accompanied  by 


S62  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIV. 

only  three  savages,  who  might  abandon  me  from  levity,  or 
from  fear  of  enemies  might  fly.  The  horror  of  these  vast, 
uninhabited  forest  regions,  where  in  twelve  days  not  a  soul 
was  met,  almost  took  away  all  courage.  Here  was  a  journey 
where  there  was  no  village,  no  bridge,  no  ferry,  no  boat,  no 
house,  no  beaten  path,  and  over  boundless  prairies,  intersected 
by  rivulets  and  rivers  ;  through  forests  and  thickets  filled 
with  briers  and  thorns  ;  through  marshes,  where  we  plunged 
sometimes  to  the  girdle.  At  night,  repose  was  sought  on 
the  grass,  or  on  leaves,  exposed  to  wind  and  rain  ;  happy  if 
by  the  side  of  some  rivulet,  of  which  a  draught  might 
quench  thirst.  A  meal  was  prepared  from  such  game  as  was 
killed  on  the  way,  or  by  roasting  ears  of  corn." 

The  gentle  virtues  and  fervid  eloquence  of  Mermet  made 
him  the  soul  of  the  mission  at  Kaskaskia.  At  early  dawn, 
his  pupils  came  to  church,  dressed  neatly  and  modestly,  each 
in  a  large  deerskin,  or  in  a  robe  stitched  together  from 
smaller  peltry.  After  receiving  lessons,  they  chanted  canti- 
cles ;  mass  was  then  said  in  presence  of  all  the  Christians 
in  the  place,  the  French  and  the  converts,  —  the  women  on 
one  side,  the  men  on  the  other.  From  prayer  and  instruc- 
tion, the  missionaries  proceeded  to  visit  the  sick  and  admin- 
ister medicine ;  and  their  skill  as  physici.ans  did  more  than 
all  the  rest  to  win  confidence.  In  the  afternoon,  the  cate- 
chism was  taught,  in  presence  of  the  young  and  the  old, 
where  every  one,  without  distinction  of  rank  or  age,  an- 
swered the  questions  of  the  missionary.  At  evening,  all 
would  assemble  at  the  chapel  for  instruction,  for  prayer,  and 
to  chant  the  hymns  of  the  church.  On  Sundays  and  festi- 
vals, even  after  vespers,  a  homily  was  pronounced ;  at  the 
close  of  the  day,  parties  would  meet  in  the  cabins  to  recite 
the  chaplet  in  alternate  choirs,  and  sing  psalms  into  the 
night.  Their  psalms  were  often  homilies,  with  the  words 
set  to  familiar  tunes.  Saturday  and  Sunday  were  the  days 
for  confession  and  communion,  and  every  convert  confessed 
once  in  a  fortnight.  Marriages  of  the  French  emigrants 
were  sometimes  solemnized  with  the  daughters  of  the  Illi- 
nois according  to  the  rites  of  the  Catholic  Church.  The 
mission  was  a  cantonment  of  Europeans  among  the  native 
proprietors  of  the  prairies. 


1699.  RIVALRY  OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  863 

Jesuits  and  fur-traders  were  the  founders  of  Illinois ; 
Louis  XIV.  and  privileged  companies  were  the  patrons  of 
Southern  Louisiana ;  the  honor  of  beginning  the  work  of 
colonization  in  th,e  south-west  of  our  republic  belongs  to  the 
illustrious  Canadian,  Lemoine  d'Iberville.  Present  as  a 
volunteer  in  the  midnight  attack  upon  Schenectady,  where 
he  was  chiefly  remembered  for  an  act  of  clemency ;  at  Port 
Nelson,  calm  amidst  the  crash  of  icebergs  in  which  his 
vessels  had  becohi^involved,  and,  though  exceedingly  moved 
by  the  loss  of  his  yoting  brother  in  a  skirmish  with  the  En^.. 
lish,  yet  preserving  his  countenance  without  a  sign  of  dis- 
quiet, putting  his  whole  trust  in  God,  and  with  tranquil 
daring  making  a  conquest  of  the  fort  which  controls  the 
vast  Indian  commerce  of  the  wide  regions  of  Nelson  River » 
the  captor  of  Pemaquid  ;  the  successful  invader  of  the 
English  possessions  on  Newfoundland ;  and  again,  in  1697, 
in  spite  of  icebergs  and  a  shipwreck,  victorious  in  naval 
contests  on  the  gloomy  waters  of  Hudson's  Bay,  and  recog- 
nised as  the  most  skilful  naval  officer  in  the  service  of 
France, — he,  the  idol  of  his  Canadian  countrymen,  ever 
buoyant  and  brave,  after  the  peace  of  Ryswick  sought  and 
obtained  a  commission  for  establishing  direct  maritime 
intercourse  between  France  and   the  Mississippi. 

On  the  seventeenth  day  of  October,  1698,  two  frig-       i698. 
ates   and  two  smaller  vessels,  with    a   company  of 
marines  and  about  two  hundred  settlers,  including  a  few 
women  and  children,  —  most  of  the  men  being  disbanded 
Canadian  soldiers,  —  embarked  for  the   Mississippi,  which 
as  yet  had  never  been  entered  from  the  sea.     Happier  than 
La  Salle,  the  leader  of  the  enterprise  won  confidence  and 
affection  everywhere  :  the  governor  of  St.  Domingo 
gave  him  a  welcome,  and  bore  a  willing  testimony  to       Dec. 
his  genius  and  his  good  judgment.     A  larger  ship-of- 
war  from  that  station  joined  the  expedition,  which, 
in  January,  1699,  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  continent,  jan^^2T. 
and  anchored  before  the  Island  St.  Rose.     On  the 
opposite  shore,  the  fort  of  Pensacola  had  just  been  estab- 
lished by  three  hundred  Spaniards  from  Vera  Cruz.     This 
prior  occupation  is  the  reason  why,  afterwards,  Pensacola 


364  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIV. 

remained  a  part  of  Florida,  and  the  dividing  line  between 
that  province  and  Louisiana  was  drawn  between  the  Bays 
of  Pensacola  and  Mobile.  Obedient  to  his  orders  and  to 
the  maxims  of  the  mercantile  system,  the  governor  of  Pen- 
sacola would  allow  no  foreign  vessel  to  enter  the  harbor. 

Sailing  to  the  west,  D'Iberville  cast  anchor  south- 
Feb^*2.    south-east  of  the  eastern  point  of  Mobile,  and  landed 

on  Massacre,  or,  as  it  was  rather  called,  Dauphine 
Island.  The  water  between  Ship  and  Horn  Islands  being 
found  too  shallow,  the  larger  ship  from  the  station  of  St. 
Domingo  returned,  and  the  frigates  anchored  near  the 
groups  of  the  Chandeleur ;  while  D'Iberville  with  his  people 
erected  huts  on  Ship  Island,  and  made  the  discovery  of  the 
river  Pascagoula  and  the  tribes  of  Biloxi.  The  next  day,  a 
party  of  Bayagoulas  from  the  Mississippi  passed  by :  they 
were  warriors  returning  from  an  inroad  into  the  land  of  the 
Indians  of  Mobile. 
^  ^  ,„        In  two  bargres,  D'Iberville  and  his  brother  Bien- 

Feb.  27. 

ville,  with  a  Franciscan  who  had  been  a  companion 
to  La  Salle,  and  with  forty-eight  men,  set  forth  to  seek  the 
Mississippi.  Floating  trees,  and  the  turbid  aspect  of  the 
waters,  guided  to  its  mouth.  On  the  second  day  in  March, 
they  entered  the  mighty  river,  and  ascended  to  the  village 
of  the  Bayagoulas,  —  a  tribe  which  then  dwelt  on  its  west- 
ern bank,  just  below  the  river  Iberville,  worshipping,  it  was 
said,  an  opossum  for  their  manitou,  and  preserving  in  their 
temple  an  undying  fire.  There  they  found  a  letter  from 
Tonti  to  La  Salle,  written  in  1684,  and  safely  preserved  by 
the  wondering  natives.  The  Oumas  also  were  visited  ;  and 
the  party  probably  saw  the  great  bend  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Red  River.  A  parish  and  a  bayou,  that  bear  the  name  of 
Iberville,  mark  the  route  of  his  return,  through  the  lakes 
which  he  named  Maurepas  and  Pontchartrain,  to  the  bay 
which  he  called    St.   Louis.     At  the  head  of   the  Bay  of 

Biloxi,  on  a  sandy  shore,  under  a  burning  sun,  he 
May.      erected  the  fort  which,  with  its  four  bastions  and 

twelve  cannon,  was  to  be  the  sign  of  French  juris- 
diction over  the  territory  from  near  the  Rio  del  Norte 
to  the  confines   of  Pensacola.     While   D'Iberville  himself 


1699.  RIVALRY   OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  365 

sailed  for  France,  his  two  brothers,  Sauvolle  and  jggg 
Bienville,  were  left  in  command  of  the  station,  round  '^^y  ^• 
which  the  few  colonists  were  planted.  Thus  began  the 
commonwealth  of  Mississippi.  Prosperity  was  impossible  ; 
hope  could  not  extend  beyond  a  comprotnise  with  the  Span- 
iards on  its  flank,  and  the  Indian  tribes  around,  with  the 
sands  which  it  was  vain  to  till,  and  the  heat  that  may 
have  made  the  emigrants  sigh  for  the  cool  breezes  of  Hud- 
son's Bay.  Yet  there  were  gleams  of  light :  the  white  men 
from  Carolina,  allies  of  the  Chickasaws,  invaded  the  neigh- 
boring tribes  of  Indians,  making  it  easy  for  the  French  to 
establish  alliances.  Missionaries,  also,  had  already  concil- 
iated the  good-w^ll  of  remoter  nations  ;  and,  from  the  Taen- 
sas  and  the  Yazoos,  Davion  — whose  name  belonged  of  old 
to  the  rock  now  called  Fort  Adams  —  and  Montigny  floated 
down  the  Mississippi  to  visit  their  countrymen.  Already  a 
line  of  communication  existed  between  Quebec  and  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico.  The  boundless  southern  region,  made  a  part 
of  the  French  empire  by  lilies  carved  on  forest  trees  or 
crosses  erected  on  bluffs,  and  occupied  by  French  missiona- 
ries and  forest  rangers,  was  annexed  to  the  command  of 
the  governor  of  Biloxi. 

During  the  absence  of  D'Iberville,  England  showed  jeal- 
ousy of  his  enterprise.     Hennepin  had  been  taken 
into  the  pay  of  William  III.,  and  in  1698  had  pub-       1698. 
lished  a  new  work,  in  which,  to  bar  the  French  claim 
of  discovery,  he  had,  with  impudent  falsehood,  claimed  to 
have  himself  first  descended  the  Mississippi,  and  had  inter- 
polated into  his  former  narrative   a  journal   of  his 
pretended  voyage  down  the  river.     In  1699,  an  ex-       i699. 
ploring   expedition  under  the  auspices  of   Coxe,  a 
proprietor  of  'New  Jersey,  sought  for  the  mouths  of  the 
Mississippi.     "When  Bienville,  who  passed  the  summer  in 
exploring  the  forks  below  the  site  of  New  Orleans, 
descended  the  river,  he  met  an  English  ship  of  six-  Sept.  16. 
teen  guns,  commanded  by  Barr ;  one  of  two  vessels 
which  had  been  sent  to  sound  the  passes  of  the  majestic 
stream.    Giving  heed  to  the  assertion  of  Bienville  of  French 
supremacy,  as  proved  by  French  establishments,  the  English 


366  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIV. 

captain  turned  back ;  and  the  bend  in  the  river  where  the 
interview  was  held  is  still  called  English  Turn. 

Thus  failed  the  project  of  Coxe  to  possess  what  he  styled 
the  English  province  of  Carolana.  But  Hennepin  —  who, 
had  he  but  loved  truth,  would  have  gained  a  noble  reputa- 
tion, and  who  now  is  remembered,  not  merely  as  a  light- 
hearted,  ambitious,  daring  discoverer,  but  also  as  a  boastful 
liar  —  had  had  an  audience  of  William  III.;  a  memorial 
from  Coxe  was  presented  to  King  William  in  council,  and 
the  members  were  unanimous  in  the  opinion  that  the  set- 
tling of  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi  should  be  encouraged. 
"  I  will  leap  over  twenty  stumbling-blocks  rather  than  not 
effect  it,"  said  William  of  Orange ;  and  he  often  assured 
the  proprietor  of  his  willingness  to  send  over,  at  his  own 
cost,  several  hundred  Huguenot  and  Yaudois  refugees.  But 
England  was  never  destined  to  acquire  more  than  a  nominal 
possession  of  the  Mississippi ;  nor  could  Spain  do  more  than 
protest  against  what  it  regarded  as  a  dismemberment  of  the 
government  of  Mexico. 

At  this  time,  Bienville  received  the  memorial  of 

1699. 

French  Protestants  to  be  allowed,  under  French  sov- 
ereignty, and  in  the  enjoyment  of  freedom  of  conscience,  to 
plant  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi.  "  The  king,"  answered 
Pontchartrain  at  Paris,  "  has  not  driven  Protestants  from 

France  to  make  a  republic  of  them  in  America ;  "  and 
Dec.  7.    D'Iberville  returned  from  Europe  with  projects  far 

unlike  the  peaceful  pursuits  of  agriculture.  First 
jan%7.  came  the  occupation  of  the  Mississippi  by  a  fortress 

built  on  its  bank,  on  a  point  elevated  above  the 
marshes,  not  far  from  the  sea,  soon  to  be  abandoned.  In 
February,  Tonti  came  down  from  the  Illinois  ;  and,  under  his 
guidance,  the  brothers  D'Iberville  and  Bienville  ascended 
the  Great  River,  and  made  peace  between  the  Oumas  and 
the  Bayagoulas.  Among  the  Natchez,  the  Great  Sun,  fol- 
lowed by  a  large  retinue  of  his  people,  welcomed  the  stran- 
gers. His  country  seemed  best  suited  to  a  settlement :  a 
bluff,  now  known  as  Natchez,  was  selected  for  a  town,  and, 
in  honor  of  the  Countess  of  Pontchartrain,  was  called 
Rosalie. 


1702.  RIVALRY   OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAIO).  367 

"While  D'Iberville  descended  to  his  ships,  soon  to  embark 
for  France,  his  brother,  in  March,  explored  Western  Louis- 
iana, and,  crossing  the  Red  River,  approached  New  Mexico. 
No  tidings  of  exhaustless  wealth  were  gleaned  from  the 
natives ;  no  mines  of  unparalleled  productiveness  were  dis- 
covered among  the  troublesome  morasses ;  and  Saint-Deny s, 
with  a  motley  group  of  Canadians  and  Indians,  was  sent  to 
ramble  for  six  months  in  the  far  west,  that  he  might  cer- 
tainly find  the  land  of  gold.  In  April,  Le  Sueur  led  a  com- 
pany, in  quest  of  mineral  stores,  to  mountains  in  our  north- 
western territory.  Passing  beyond  the  Wisconsin,  beyond 
the  Chippewa,  beyond  the  St.  Croix,  he  sailed  north  till  he 
reached  the  mouth  of  the  St.  Peter's,  and,  entering  that 
river,  he  came  to  the  confluence  of  the  Blue  Earth.  There, 
in  a  fort  among  lowas,  he  passed  the  winter,  that  he  might 
take  possession  of  a  copper  mine,  and  on  the  return  of  spring 
fill  his  boats  with  heaps  of  ore. 

Le   Sueur  had  not  yet  returned  to  Biloxi,  when     1701. 
news  came  from  the  impatient  ministry  of  impover-  ^^y^'^- 
ished  France  that  certainly  there  were  gold  mines  on  the 
Missouri.     But  bilious  fevers  sent  death  among  the  dream- 
ers about  veins  of  precious  metals  and  rocks  of  emer- 
ald.    SauvoUe  was  an  early  victim,  leaving  the  chief  July  22. 
command  to  the  youthful  Bienville  ;  and  great  havoc 
was  made  among  the  colonists,  who  were  dependent  on  the 
Indians  for  baskets  of  corn,  and  were  saved  from  famine  by 
the  chase  and  the  net  and  line.     The   Choctaws  and  the 
Mobile  Indians  desired  an  alliance  against  the  Chickasaws ; 
and  the  French  were  too  weak  to  act,  except  as  mediators. 
In  December,   D'Iberville,  arriving  with  re-enforcements, 
found  but  one  hundred  and  fifty  alive. 

Early  in  1702,  the  chief  fortress  of  the  French  was  1702. 
transferred  from  Biloxi  to  the  western  bank  of  the 
Mobile  River,  the  first  settlement  of  Europeans  in  Alabama ; 
and  during  the  same  season,  though  Dauphine  Island  was 
flat,  and  covered  with  sands  which  hardly  nourished  a  grove 
of  pines,  its  excellent  harbor  was  occupied  as  a  convenient 
station  for  ships.  Such  was  Louisiana  in  the  days  of  its 
founder.     Attacked  by  the  yellow  fever,  D'Iberville  escaped 


368  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIV. 

with  his  life,  but  his  health  was  broken  ;  and,  though  he 
gained  strength  to  render  service  to  France  in  1706,  the 
effort  was  followed  by  a  severe  illness,  which  termi- 
juiy^9.  lifted  in  his  death  at  the  Havana.  In  him,  the  colo- 
nies and  the  French  navy  lost  a  hero  worthy  of  their 
regret.  But  Louisiana,  at  his  departure,  was  little 
1702.  more  than  a  wilderness  claimed  in  behalf  of  the 
French  king,  and  occupied  by  scarcely  thirty  families. 
The  colonists  were  unwise  in  their  objects,  searching  for 
pearls,  for  the  wool  of  the  buffalo,  for  productive  mines. 
Their  scanty  number  was  scattered  on  discoveries,  or  among 
the  Indians  in  quest  of  furs.  There  was  no  quiet  agricul- 
tural industry.  Of  the  lands  that  were  occupied,  the  coast 
of  Biloxi  is  as  sandy  as  the  deserts  of  Libya ;  the  soil  on 
Dauphine  Island  is  meagre  :  on  the  delta  of  the  Mississippi, 
where  a  fort  had  been  built,  Bienville  and  his  few  soldiers 
were  insulated  and  unhappy,  at  the  mercy  of  the  rise  of 
waters  in  the  river ;  and  the  buzz  and  sting  of  mosquitoes, 
the  hissing  of  snakes,  the  croakings  of  frogs,  the  cries  of 
alligators,  seemed  to  claim  that  the  country  should  still,  for 
a  generation,  be  the  inheritance  of  reptiles ;  while,  at  the 
fort  of  Mobile,  the  hopeless  character  of  the  barrens  warned 
the  emigrants  to  seek  homes  farther  within  the  land. 


/ 


/ 


1701.         THE  WAR  OF  THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION.         369 


CHAPTER   XXXV. 

THE    WAR    OF    THE    SPANISH    SUCCESSION. 

But,  at  least,  the  Spaniards  at  Pensacola  were  no  longer 
hostile ;  Spain,  as  well  as  France,  had  fallen  under  the  sov- 
ereignty of  the  Bourbons ;  and,  after  ineffectual  treaties  for 
a  partition  of  the  Spanish  monarchy,  all  Europe  was  kin- 
dling into  wars,  to  preserve  the  balance  of  power  or  to 
refute  the  doctrine  of  legitimacy.  This  is  the  period  when 
Spain  became  intimately  involved  in  our  destinies  ;  and  she 
long  remained,  like  France,  the  enemy  to  our  fathers  as 
subjects  of  England. 

The  liberties  of  the  provinces,  of  the  military  corpora- 
tions, of  the  cities  of  Spain,  had  gradually  become  merged 
in  despotism.  The  position  of  the  peninsula,  separated  from 
Europe  by  a  chain  of  mountains,  and  intersected  by  high 
ridges,  had  not  favored  the  spirit  of  liberal  inquiry  ;  and  the 
inquisition  had  so  manacled  the  national  intelligence  that 
the  country  of  Cervantes  and  Calderon  had  relapsed  into 
inactivity.  The  contest  against  the  Arabs  had  been  a 
struggle  of  Catholic  Christianity  against  Moslem  theism ; 
and,  as  it  had  been  continued  for  seven  centuries  with 
inexorable  consistency,  had  given  to  Spanish  character  the 
aspect  of  exclusiveness,  which  was  heightened  by  the  pride 
consequent  on  success.  France  had  amalgamated  provin- 
ces ;  Spain  had  dealt  with  nations :  France  had  triumphed 
over  separate  sovereignties  ;  Spain  over  religions. 

But  Spain  was  not  only  deficient  in  active  intelligence, 
and  in  toleration  ;  she  also  had  lost  men.  From  Ferdinand 
the  Catholic  to  Philip  III.,  she  had  expelled  three  millions 
of  Jews  and  Moors ;  her  inferior  nobility  emigrated  to 
America ;  in  1702,  her  census  enumerated  less  than  seven 
million  souls.  The  nation  that  once  would  have  invaded 
VOL.  II.  24 


370 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXV. 


England  had  no  navy ;  and,  possessing  mines  in  Mexico  and 
South  America,  it  needed  subscriptions  for  its  defence. 
Foreigners,  by  means  of  loans  and  mortgages,  gained  more 
than  seven  eighths  of  the  wealth  from  America,  and  furnished 
more  than  nine  tenths  of  the  merchandise  shipped  for  the 
colonies.  Spanish  commerce  had  expired  ;  Spanish  man- 
ufactures had  declined ;  even  agriculture  had  fallen  a  victim 
1701.  to  mortmains  and  privilege.  Inactivity  was  followed 
Oct.  30.    Y)j  poverty  ;  and  the  dynasty  itself  became  extinct. 

If  the  doctrine  of  legitimacy  -were  to  be  recognised  as  of 
divine  origin,  and  therefore  paramount  to  treaties,  the  king 
of  France  could  claim  for  his  own  family  the  inheritance  of 
Spain.  That  claim  was  sanctioned  by  the  testament  of 
the  last  Spanish  king,  and  by  the  desire  of  the  Spanish 
people,  whose  anger  had  been  roused  by  the  attempts  at 
partition.  The  crown  of  Spain  held  the  Low  Countries, 
the  Milanese,  and  the  Two  Sicilies,  besides  its  world  in  the 
Indies ;  and  the  union  of  so  many  states  in  the  family  of  the 
Bourbons  seemed  to  threaten  the  freedom  of  Europe,  and  to 
secure  to  France  colonial  supremacy.  William  III. 
1702.  resolved  on  war.  In  the  last  year  of  his  life,  suffer- 
ing from  a  mortal  disease,  —  with  swollen  feet,  voice 
extinguished ;  too  infirm  to  receive  visits  ;  alone,  separate 
from  the  world,  at  the  castle  of  St.  Loo,  —  he  rallied  new 
alliances,  governed  the  policy  of  Europe,  and,  as  to  terri- 
tory, shaped  the  destinies  of  America.  In  the  midst 
Sepsis  ^^  negotiations,  James  II.  died  at  St.  Germain ;  and 
Louis  roused  the  nationality  of  England  by  recognis- 
ing the  son  of  the  royal  exile  as  the  legitimate  king  of  Great 
Britain.  The  war  for  the  balance  of  power,  for  colonial 
territory,  and  for  commercial  advantages,  became  also  a  war 
of  opinions. 

Louis  XIY.,  "  that  wicked  persecutor  of  God's  peo- 
ple," as  he  was  called  in  a  Boston  pulpit,  was  grown 
old ;  and  the  men  of  energy  in  his  cabinet  and  his  army 
were  gone.  There  was  no  Colbert  to  put  order  into  his 
finances,  no  Louvois  to  inspire  terror;  Luxembourg  was 
dead,  and  the  wise  Catinat  no  more  a  favorite.  Two 
1704.       years   passed   without   reverses ;    but  the  battle  of 


1702.         THE  WAR  OF  THE  SPANISH   SUCCESSION.         371 

Blenheim  revealed  the  exhaustion  of  France.  The  armies 
of  Louis  Xiy.  were  opposed  by  troops  collected  from 
England,  the  empire,  Holland,  Savoy,  Portugal,  Denmark, 
Prussia,  and  Lorraine,  led  on  by  Eugene  and  Marlborough, 
who,  completing  the  triumvirate  with  the  grand  pensionary 
Heinsius,  combined  in  their  service  money,  numbers,  fore- 
thought, and  military  genius. 

The  central  colonies  of  our  republic  were  undisturbed, 
except  as  they  were  invited  to  aid  in  defending  the  borders, 
or  were  sometimes  alarmed  at  a  privateer  hovering  off  their 
coast.  The  Five  Nations,  at  peace  with  both  France  and 
England,  protected  New  York  by  a  mutual  compact  of 
neutrality.  South  Carolina,  bordering  on  Spanish  Florida  ; 
New  England,  which  had  so  often  conquered  Acadia,  and 
coveted  the  fisheries,  —  were  alone  involved  in  the  direct 
evils  of  war. 

South  Carolina  began  colonial  hostilities.  Its  gov-  1702. 
ernor,  James  Moore,  by  the  desire  of  the  commons,  ^^p*^' 
placed  himself  at  the  head  of  an  expedition  for  the  reduc- 
tion of  St.  Augustine.  The  town  was  e-asily  ravaged ;  but 
the  garrison  retreated  to  the  castle,  and  the  besiegers  waited 
the  arrival  of  heavy  artillery.  To  obtain  it,  a  sloop  was 
sent  to  Jamaica;  but  an  emissary  had  already  announced 
the  danger  to  Bienville  at  Mobile,  who  conveyed  the  intel- 
ligence to  the  Spanish  viceroy ;  and,  when  two  Spanish 
vessels  of  war  appeared  near  the  mouth  of  the  harbor, 
Moore  abandoned  his  ships  and  stores,  and  retreated  by 
land.  The  colony,  burdened  with  debt,  pleaded  the  prece- 
dent "of  great  and  rich  countries,"  and  confident  that 
"funds  of  credit  have  fully  answered  the  ends  of  money, 
and  given  the  people  a  quick  circulation  of  their  trade  and 
cash,"  issued  bills  of  credit  to  the  amount  of  six  thousand 
pounds.  To  Carolina,  the  first-fruits  of  war  were  debt  and 
paper  money. 

This  ill  success  diminished  the  terror  of  the  Indians. 
The  Spaniards  had  long  occupied  the  country  on  the  Bay 
of  Appalachee ;  had  gathered  the  natives  into  towns,  built 
for  them  churches,  and  instructed  them  by  missions  of 
Franciscan  priests.     The  traders  of  Carolina  beheld  with 


3T2  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXV. 

alarm  the  continuous  line  of  communication  from  St.  Au- 
gustine to  the  incipient  settlements  in  Louisiana ;  and,  in 
the  last  weeks  of  1705,  a  company  of  fifty  volunteers,  under 
the  command  of  Moore,  and  assisted  by  a  thousand  savage 
allies,  roamed  through  the  woods  by  the  trading  path  across 
the  Ocmulgee,  descended  through  the  regions  which  none 
but  De  Soto  had  invaded,  and  came  upon  the  Indian  towns 
near  the  port  of  St.  Mark's.  There  seems  no  reason  to 
doubt  that  the  inhabitants  spoke  a  dialect  of  the  language 
of  the  Muskohgees.     They  had  already  learned  the  use  of 

horses  and  of  beeves,  Avhich  multiplied  without  care 
Dec!*i4.  ^^  their  groves.     At  sunrise,  on   the  fourteenth  of 

December,  the  adventurers  reached  the  strong  place 
of  Ayavalla.  Beaten  back  from  the  assault  with  loss,  they 
succeeded  in  sotting  fire  to  the  church,  which  adjoined  the 
fort.  A  "  barefoot  friar,"  the  only  white  man,  came  for- 
ward to  beg  mercy ;  more  than  a  hundred  women  and  chil- 
dren, and  more  than  fifty  warriors,  were  taken  and  kept 

as  prisoners  for  the  slave-market.  On  the  next 
Dec  15.  morning,  the  Spanish  commander  on  the  bay,  with 

twenty-three  soldiers  and  four  hundred  Indians,  gave 
battle,  and  was  defeated;   but  the   Spanish  fort  was  too 

strong  to  be  carried  by  storm.  The  tawny  chief  of 
Dec.  17.   Ivitachma  "  compounded    for  peace  with  the  plate 

of  his  church  and  ten  horses  laden  with  provisions." 
Five  other  towns  submitted  without  conditions.  Most  of 
their  people  abandoned  their  homes,  and  were  received  as 
free  emigrants  into  the  jurisdiction  of  Carolina.  Thus  was 
St.  Augustine  insulated  by  the  victory  over  its  allies.  The 
Creeks,  that  dwelt  between  Appalachee  and  Mobile,  being 
friends  to  Carolina,  interrupted  the  communication  with 
the  French.  The  English  flag  having  been  carried  trium- 
phantly through  the  wilderness  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  the 
savages  were  overawed;  and  Great  Britain  establi.-<hed  a 
new  claim  to  the  forests  that  were  soon  to  be  named 
Georgia. 

In  the  next  year,  a  French  squadron  from  the 

Havana  attempted  revenge  by  an  invasion  of  Charles- 
ton ;  but  the  brave  William  Rhett  and  the  governor,  Sir 


1703.         THE  WAR  OF  THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION.  373 

Nathaniel  Johnson,  inspired  courage,  and  prepared  defence. 
The  Huguenots,  also,  panted  for  action.  One  of  the  French 
ships  was  taken ;  and,  wherever  a  landing  was  effected,  the 
enemy  was  attacked  with  such  energy  that,  of  eight  hun- 
dred, three  hundred  were  killed  or  taken  prisoners.  The 
colonists  fought  like  brave  men  contending  for  their  families 
and  homes.  Unaided  by  the  proprietaries.  South  Carolina 
gloriously  defended  her  territory,  and,  with  very  little  loss, 
repelled  the  invaders.  The  result  of  the  war  at  the  south 
was  an  indefinite  extension  of  the  English  boundary  far 
into  the  territory  that  Spain  had  esteemed  as  a  portion  of 
Florida. 

At  the  north,  tlie  province  of  Massachusetts  alone  was 
desolated :  for  her,  the  history  of  the  wsxr  is  but  a  catalogue 
of  misery.  The  Marquis  de  Vaudreuil,  now  governor  of 
Canada,  made  haste  to  conciliate  the  Iroquois.  A  treaty 
of  neutrality  with  the  Senecas  was  commemorated  by  two 
strings  of  wampum :  to  prevent  the  rupture  of  this  happy 
agreement,  he  resolved  to  send  no  war-parties  against  the 
English  on  the  side  of  New  York. 

The  English  were  less  successful  in  their  plans  of  1703. 
neutrality  with -the  Abenakis.  A  congress  of  chiefs, '^'*"®  ^^* 
from  the  Merrimack  to  the  Penobscot,  met  Governor  Dudley 
at  Casco  :  "  The  sun,"  said  tliey,  "  is  not  more  distant  from 
the  earth  than  our  thoughts  from  war ; "  and,  giving  the 
belt  of  wampum,  they  added  new  stones  to  the  two  piles 
which  had  been  raised  as  memorials  of  friendship.  Yet, 
within  six  weeks,  the  whole  country  from  Casco  to 
Wells  was  in  a  conflagration.  On  one  and  the  same  Aug.  10. 
day,  the  several  parties  of  the  Indians,  with  the 
French,  burst  upon  every  house  or  garrison  in  that  region, 
sparing,  says  the  faithful  chronicler,  "  neither  the  milk-white 
brows  of  the  ancient,  nor  the  mournful  cries  of  tender  in- 
fants." Cruelty  became  an  art,  and  honor  was  awarded  to 
the  most  skilful  contriver  of  tortures.  The  prowling  Indian 
seemed  near  every  farm-house ;  many  an  individual  was 
suddenly  snatched  away  into  captivity.  If  armed  men, 
rousing  for  the  attack,  penetrated  to  the  fastnesses  of  their 
roving  enemy,  they  found  nothing  but  solitudes. 


BT4  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXV. 

1704.  Death  hung  on  the  frontier.     The  farmers,  that 

had  built  their  dwellings  on  the  bank  just  above  the 
beautiful  meadows  of  Deerfield,  had  surrounded  with  pickets 
an  enclosure  of  twenty  acres,  the  villnge  citadel.  There  were 
separate  dwelling-houses,  also  fortified  by  a  circle  of  sticks 
of  timber  set  upright  in  the  ground.  Their  occupants  knew, 
through  the  Mohawks,  that  danger  was  at  hand.  All  that 
winter,  there  was  not  a  night  but  the  sentinel  was  abroad ; 
not  a  mother  lulled  her  infant  to  rest,  without  fearing 
that,  before  morning,  the  tomahawk  might  crush  its  feeble 

skull.  The  snow  lay  four  feet  deep,  when  the  clear, 
Feb.       invigorating  air  of  mid-winter  cheered  the  war-party 

of  about  two  hundred  French  and  one  hundred  and 
forty-two  Indians,  who,  with  the  aid  of  snow-shoes,  and  led 
by  Hertel  de  Rouville,  had  walked  on  the  crust  all  the  way 
from  Canada.  On  the  last  night  in  February,  a  pine  forest 
near  Deerfield  gave  them  shelter  till  after  midnight.  When, 
at  the  approach  of  morning,  the  unfaithful  sentinels  retired, 
the  war-party  entered  within  the  palisades,  which  drifts  of 
snow  had  made  useless  ;  and  the  war-whoop  of  the  savages 
bade  each  family  prepare  for  captivity  or  death.  The  vil- 
lage was  set  on  fire,  and  all  but  the  church  and  one  dwell- 
ing-house  were   consumed.     Of   the   inhabitants,   but    few 

escaped :  forty-seven  were  killed ;  one  hundred  and 
Mar.  1.    twelve,  including  the  minister  and  his  family,  were 

made  captives.  One  hour  after  sunrise,  the  party 
began  its  return  to  Canada.  But  who  would  know  the 
horrors  of  that  winter  march  through  the  wilderness  ? 
Two  men  starved  to  death.  Did  a  young  child  weep  from 
fatigue,  or  a  woman  totter  from  anguish  under  the  burden 
of  her  own  offspring,  the  tomahawk  stilled  complaint,  or 
the  infant  was  cast  out  upon  the  snow.  Eunice  Williams, 
the  wife  of  the  minister,  had  not  forgotten  her  Bible ;  and, 
when  they  rested  by  the  wayside,  or  at  night  made  their 
couch  of  branches  of  evergreen  strown  on  the  snow,  the 
savages  allowed  her  to  read  it.  Having  but  recently  recov- 
ered from  confinement,  her  strength  soon  failed.  To  her 
husband,  who  reminded  her  of  the  "house  not  made  with 
hands,  eternal  in  the  heavens,"  "  she  justified  God  in  whatj 


1708.        THE  WAR  OF  THE  SPANISH   SUCCESSION.  375 

had  happened."  The  mother's  heart  rose  to  her  lips,  as  she 
commended  her  five  captive  children,  under  God,  to  their 
father's  care ;  and  then  one  blow  from  a  tomahawk  ended 
her  sorrows.  "  She  rests  in  peace,"  said  her  husband,  "  and 
joy  unspeakable  and  full  of  glory."  In  Canada,  no  entrea- 
ties, no  offers  of  ransom,  could  rescue  his  youngest  daughter, 
then  a  girl  of  but  seven  years  old.  Adopted  into  the  vil- 
lage of  the  praying  Indians  near  Montreal,  she  became  a 
proselyte  to  the  Catholic  faith,  and  the  wife  of  a  Cahne- 
waga  chief.  When,  after  long  years,  she  visited  her  friends 
at  Deerfield,  she  appeared  in  an  Indian  dress ;  and  after  a 
short  sojourn,  in  spite  of  a  day  of  fast  of  a  whole  village, 
which  assembled  to  pray  for  her  deliverance,  she  returned 
to  the  fires  of  her  own  wigwam,  and  to  the  love  of  her  own 
Mohawk  children. 

There  is  no  tale  to  tell  but  of  rural  dangers  and  . 
sorrows.  In  the  following  years,  the  Indians  stealth-  ""1707*** 
ily  approached  towns  in  the  heart  of  Massachusetts, 
as  well  as  along  the  coast,  and  on  the.  southern  and  western 
frontiers.  Children,  as  they  gambolled  on  the  beach  ;  reap- 
ers, as  they  gathered  the  harvest ;  mowers,  as  they  rested 
from  using  the  scythe ;  mothers,  as  they  busied  themselves 
about  the  household,  —  were  victims  to  an  enemy  who  dis- 
appeared the  moment  a  blow  was  struck,  and  who  was 
ever  present  where  a  garrison  or  a  family  ceased  its  vigi- 
lance. 

In  1708,  at  a  war-council  at  Montreal,  a  grand  ex-  nos, 
pedition  was  resolved  on  by  the  French  Indians 
against  New  England,  to  be  led  by  French  officers,  and 
assisted  by  a  hundred  picked  Canadians.  The  party  of  the 
French  Mohawks  and  the  Ilurons  failed ;  but  the  French 
under  Des  Chaillons  and  Hertel  de  Rouville,  the  destroyer 
of  Deerfield,  willing  to  continue  murdering  helpless  women 
and  children,  when  a  part  at  least  of  the  savages  were 
weary  of  it,  with  Algonkin  Indians  as  allies,  ascended  the 
St.  Francis,  and  passing  by  the  White  Mountains,  having 
travelled  near  one  hundred  and  fifty  leagues  through  almost 
impracticable  paths,  made  their  rendezvous  at  Winnipise- 
ogee.     There  they  failed  to  meet  the  expected  aid  from  the 


376 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXV. 


Abenakis,  and  in  consequence  were  too  feeble  for  an  attack 
on  Portsmouth  ;  they  therefore  descended  the  Merrimack  to 
the  town  of  Haverhill,  resolving  to  sack  a  remote  village 
rather  than  return  without  striking  a  blow. 

Haverhill  was,  at  that  time,  a  cluster  of  thirty  cottages 
and  log  cabins,  embosomed  in  the  primeval  forests,  near 
the  tranquil  Merrimack.  In  the  centre  of  the  settlement 
stood  a  new  meeting-house,  the  pride  of  the  village.  On 
the  few  acres  of  open  land,  the  ripening  Indian  corn  rose 
over  the  charred  stumps  of  trees,  and  on  the  north  and 
west  bordered  on  the  unbroken  wilderness,  which  stretched 
to  the  White  Mountains  and  beyond  them,  and  by  its  very 
extent  seemed  a  bulwark  against  invasion.  On  tlie 
A^ug^29.  twenty-ninth  of  August,  evening  prayers  had  been 
said  in.  each  family,  and  the  village  had  resigned 
itself  to  sleep.  That  night,  the  band  of  invaders  slept 
quietly  in  the  near  forest.  At  daybreak,  they  assumed  the 
order  of  battle  ;  Rouville  addressed  the  soldiers,  who,  after 
their  orisons,  marched  against  the  fort,  raised  the  shrill  yell, 
and  dispersed  themselves  through  the  village  to  their  work 
of  blood.  The  rifle  rang ;  the  cry  of  the  dying  rose.  Ben- 
jamin Rolfe,  the  minister,  was  beaten  to  death  ;  one  Indian 
sunk  a  hatchet  deep  into  the  brain  of  his  wife,  while  another 
caught  his  infant  child  and  dashed  its  head  against  a  stone. 
Thomas  Hartshorne  and  two  of  his  sons,  attempting  a  rally, 
were  shot ;  a  third  son  was  tomahawked.  John  Johnston 
was  shot  by  the  side  of  his  wife  ;  she  fled  into  the  garden, 
bearing  an  infant ;  was  caught  and  murdered ;  but,  as  she 
fell,  she  concealed  her  child,  which  was  found,  after  the 
massacre,  clinging  to  her  breast.  Simon  Wainwright  was 
killed  at  the  first  fire.  Mary,  his  wife,  fearlessly  unbarred 
the  door ;  with  cheerful  mien,  bade  the  savages  enter  ;  pro- 
cured for  them  what  they  wished  ;  and,  when  they  demanded 
money,  she  retired  as  if  to  ''  bring  it,"  and,  gathering  up  all 
her  children  save  one,  succeeded  in  escaping. 

All  the  attacks  were  made  simultaneously.  The  English 
began  to  gather ;  the  intrejjid  Davis  sounded  an  alarm ;  and, 
as  the  destroyers  retired,  Samuel  Ayer.  ever  to  be  remem- 
bered in  village  annals,  with  a  force  which  equalled  but  a 


1708.        THE  WAR   OF  THE   SPANISH   SUCCESSION.         377 

thirteenth  part  of  the  invaders,  hung  on  their  rear,  —  him- 
self a  victim,  yet  rescuing  several  from  captivity. 

The  day  was  advanced  when  the  battle  ended.  1708. 
The  rude  epitaph  on  the  moss-grown  stone  tells 
where  the  interment  was  made  in  haste  ;  Rolfe,  his  wife, 
and  child,  fill  one  grave ;  in  the  burial-ground  of  the  vil- 
lage, an  ancient  mound  marks  the  resting-place  of  the 
multitude  of  the  slain. 

Such  were  the  sorrows  of  that  generation.  At  daybreak, 
the  villagers  seemed  secure  :  a  little  later  in  the  morning, 
while  the  dew  was  hardly  dry  on  the  willows  by  the  river- 
side, the  smoke  rose  from  smouldering  ruins,  and  the  sward 
was  red  with  the  blood  of  their  pastor  and  brave  men,  of 
women  and  mangled  babes.  "  I  hold  it  my  duty  towards 
God  and  my  neighbor,"  such  was  the  message  of  the  brave 
Peter  Schuyler  to  the  Marquis  de  Vaudreuil,  "  to  prevent, 
if  possible,  these  barbarous  and  heathen  cruelties.  My 
heart  swells  with  indignation,  when  I  think  that  a  war 
between  Christian  princes,  bound  to  the  exactest  laws  of 
honor  and  generosity,  which  their  noble  ancestors  have  illus- 
trated by  brilliant  examples,  is  degenerating  into  a  savage 
and  boundless  butchery.  These  are  not  the  methods  for 
terminating  the  war.  Would  that  all  the  world  thought 
with  me  on  this  subject ! " 

Such  fruitless  cruelties  inspired  our  fathers  with  a  deep 
hatred  of  the  French  missionaries ;  they  compelled  the  em- 
ployment of  a  large  part  of  the  inhabitants  as  soldiers ;  so 
that  there  was  one  year,  during  this  war,  when  even  a  fifth 
part  of  all  who  were  capable  of  bearing  arms  were  in  active 
service.  They  gave  birth,  also,  to  a  willingness  to  extermi- 
nate the  natives.  The  Indians  vanished  when  their  homes 
were  invaded ;  they  could  not  be  reduced  by  usual  methods 
of  warfare ;  hence  a  bounty  was  offered  for  every  Indian 
scalp ;  to  regular  forces  under  pay,  the  grant  was  ten  pounds; 
to  volunteers  in  actual  service,  twice  that  sum :  but  if  men 
would,  of  themselves,  without  pay,  make  up  parties,  and 
patrol  the  forests  in  search  of  Indians,  as  of  old  the  woods 
were  scoured  for  wild  beasts,  the  chase  was  encouraged  by 
the  promise  of  "  fifty  pounds  per  scalp." 


378  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXV. 

Meantime,  the  English  had  repeatedly  made  efforts  to 
gain  the  French  fortress  on  Newfoundland ;  and  New  Eng- 
land had  desired  the  reduction  of  Acadia,  for  the  security 
of  its  trade  and  fishery.  In  1704,  a  fleet  from  Boston  har- 
bor had  defied  Port  Royal ;  and,  three  years  afterwards, 
under  the  influence  of  Dudley,  Massachusetts  attempted  its 
conquest.  The  failure  of  that  costly  expedition,  which  was 
thwarted  by  the  activity  of  Castin,  created  discontent  in  the 
colony,  by  increasing  its  paper  money  and  its  debts.  But 
England  was  resolved  on  colonial  acquisitions :  in  1709,  a 
fleet  and  an  army  were  to  be  sent  from  Europe ;  from  Mas- 
sachusetts and  Rhode  Island,  twelve  hundred  men  were  to 
aid  in  the  conquest  of  Quebec ;  from  the  central  provinces, 
fifteen  hundred  were  to  assail  Montreal ;  and,  in  one  season, 
Acadia,  Canada,  and  Newfoundland  were  to  be  reduced 
under  British  sovereignty.  The  colonies  kindled  at  the 
prospect :  to  defray  the  expenses  of  preparation,  Connect- 
icut and  New  York  and  New  Jersey  then  first  issued  bills 
of  credit ;  stores  were  collected  ;  the  troops  levied  from  the 
hardy  agriculturists.  But  no  English  fleet  arrived  ;  and  the 
energies  that  had  been  roused  were  wasted  in  inactive 
expectation. 

At   last,  in   1710,   the   final  successful  expedition 

1710.  ,  '       ,  '  .  ^  . 

against  Acadia  took  place.     At  the  instance  of  Nich- 
olson, who  had  been  in  England  for  that  purpose,  and  under 
his  command,  six  English  vessels,  joined  by  thirty  of 
ilSg       New  England,    and   four  New  England   regiments, 
sailed  in  September  from  Boston.     In  six  days,  the 
fleet  anchored  before  the  fortress  of  Port  Royal.     The  gar- 
rison of  Subercase,  the  French  governor,  was  weak  and  dis- 
heartened, and  could  not  be  rallied ;  murmurs  and 
J^_j2        desertions  multiplied  :  the  terms  of  capitulation  were 
easily  concerted ;  the  tattered  garrison,  one  hundred 
5.^g        and  fifty-six  in  number,  marched  out  with  the  honors 
of  war,  to  beg  food  as  alms.      Famine  would  have 
soon  compelled  a  surrender  at  discretion.    The  French  were 
unwilling  to   abandon    the  hope  of   recovering  possession. 
Vaudreuil,  having  appointed  Castin  his  lieutenant  for  Aca- 
dia, in  the  winter  of  1710  sent  messengers  over  the  snows 


1711.         THE  WAR  OF  THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION.         379 

to  the  missionaries,  to  preserve  the  zeal  and  patriotism  of 
the  Indian  allies  and  the  inhabitants ;  but,  from  that  day, 
the  English  flag  has  been  safe  at  the  town,  which  in  honor 
of  the  queen  was  called  Annapolis. 

Flushed  with  victory,  Nicholson  repaired  to  Eng-  1710. 
land  to  urge  the  conquest  of  Canada.  The  tories, 
who  were  in  power,  desired  peace ;  and  colonial  successes 
might  conciliate  the  mercantile  interest  by  the  prospect  of 
commercial  advantages.  The  legislature  of  New  York  had 
unanimously  appealed  to  the  queen  on  the  dangerous  prog- 
ress of  French  dominion  at  the  w^est.  "  It  is  well  known," 
said  their  address,  "  that  the  French  can  go  by  water  from 
Quebec  to  Montreal.  From  thence  they  can  do  the  like, 
through  rivers  and  lakes,  at  the  back  of  all  your  majesty's 
plantations  on  this  continent  as  far  as  Carolina ;  and  in  this 
large  tract  of  country  live  several  nations  of  Indians  who 
are  vastly  numerous.  Among  those,  they  constantly  send 
emissaries  and  priests,  with  toys  and  trifles,  to  insinuate 
themselves  into  their  favor.  Afterwards  they  send  traders, 
then  soldiers,  and  at  last  build  forts  among  them ;  and  the 
garrisons  are  encouraged  to  intermarry,  cohabit,  and  incor- 
porate among  them ;  and  it  may  easily  be  concluded  that, 
upon  a  peace,  many  of  the  disbanded  soldiers  will  be  sent 
thither  for  that  purpose."  At  the  same  time,  five  sachems 
from  the  Iroquois  had  sailed  with  Schuyler  for  England. 
In  London,  amidst  the  gaze  of  crowds,  dressed  in  English 
small-clothes  of  black,  with  scarlet  ingrain  cloth  mantles 
edged  with  gold  for  their  blankets,  they  were  conducted  in 
state  in  coaches  to  an  audience  with  Queen  Anne  ;  and, 
giving  her  belts  of  wampum,  they  avowed  their  readiness  to 
take  up  the  hatchet  and  aid  in  the  reduction  of  Canada. 

At  that  time,  the  secretary  of  state  was  Saint-John, 
afterwards  raised  to  the  peerage  as  Viscount  Boling- 
broke,  whom  a  keen  observer  described  as  "the  greatest 
young  man"  of  his  day.  He  possessed  wit,  quickness  of 
apprehension,  good  learning,  and  excellent  taste.  Though 
fond  of  pleasure,  he  was  prompt,  and  capable  of  close  and 
long-continued  application.  Winning  friends  by  his  good 
temper  and  admirable  conversation,  he  was  the  best  or.itor 


380  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXV. 

in  the  house  of  commons ;  and  the  whole  parliament,  turned 
by  his  eloquence,  would  do  nothing  without  him.  But 
Saint-John  had  no  faith,  and  therefore  could  keep  none. 
He  could  be  true  in  his  attachment  to  a  woman  or  a  friend, 
but  not  to  a  principle  or  a  people.  "  The  rabble,"  he  would 
say,  "  is  a  monstrous  beast,  that  has  passions  to  be  moved, 
but  no  reason  to  be  appealed  to ;  .  .  .  plain  sense  will  influ- 
ence half  a  score  of  men  at  most,  while  mystery  will  lead 
millions  by  the  nose;"  and,  having  no  reliance  in  the 
power  of  the  common  mind  to  discern  the  right,  or  in  the 
power  of  truth  to  resist  opposition  and  guide  through  perils, 
he  could  give  no  fixedness  to  his  administration,  and  no 
security  to  his  fame.  Pushing  intellectual  freedom  even 
to  libertinism,  it  was  he  who  was  author  of  the  tax  on 
newspapers.  Indifferent  not  to  the  forms  of  religion  only, 
but  to  religion  itself,  he  was  the  unscrupulous  champion  of 
the  high  church,  and  supported  the  worst  acts  of  its  most 
intolerant  policy,  while  he  despised  its  priests  and  derided 
its  doctrines.  As  he  grew  older,  he  wrote  on  patriotism 
and  liberty,  and  became  himself,  from  the  dupe  of  the  Pre- 
tender, the  suitor  for  power  through  the  king's  mistress. 
Thus,  though  capable  of  great  ideas,  and  catching  glimpses 
of  universal  truth,  his  horizon  was  shut  in  by  the  selfishness 
of  his  ambition.  Writing  brilliant  treatises  on  philosophy, 
he  fretted  at  the  bit  which  curbed  his  passions  ;  and,  from 
the  unsettled  character  of  his  mind,  though  rapid  in  appro- 
priating a  scheme,  he  could  neither  inspire  confidence,  nor 
enjoy  internal  calm,  nor  arrange  an  enterprise  with  method. 
Capable  of  energy  and  present  activity,  he  wanted  sound- 
ness of  judgment  and  power  of  combination.  Such  was  the 
statesman  who  formed  the  whole  design  of  the  conquest  of 
Canada. 

The  fleet,  consisting  of  fifteen  ships-of-war  and  forty 
transports,  was  placed  under  the  command  of  Sir 
Hovenden  Walker ;  the  seven  veteran  regiments  from  Marl- 
borough's army,  with  a  battalion  of  marines,  were  intrusted 
to  Mrs.  Masham's  second  brother,  whom  the  queen  had  pen- 
sioned and  made  a  brigadier-general ;  whom  his  bottle  com- 
panions called  honest  Jack  Hill ;  whom,  when  a  tall,  ragged 


1711.         THE  WAR  OF  THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION.         381 

boy,  the  Duchess  of  Marlborough  had,  from  charity,  put  to 
school ;  and  whom  the  duke,  refusing  him  a  colonelcy,  had 
properly  described  as  good  for  nothing.  In  tlie  prepara- 
tions, the  public  treasury  was  defrauded  for  the  benefit  of 
favorites.  "  Improve  to-day,  instead  of  depending  on  to- 
morrow: "  such  was  the  secretary's  admonition  to  his  ad- 
miral. "  The  queen  is  very  uneasy  at  thje  unaccountable 
loss  of  time  in  your  stay  at  Portsmouth."  The  fleet  did 
sail  at  last ;  and  when  Saint-John  heard  of  its  safe  arrival 
at  Boston,  he  wrote  exultingly  to  the  Duke  of  Orrery  :  "  I 
believe  you  may  depend  on  our  being  masters,  at  this  time, 
of  all  North  America." 

From  June  twenty-fifth  to  the  thirtieth  day  of  July,  nil. 
the  fleet  lay  at  Boston,  taking  in  supplies  and  the  colo- 
nial forces.  At  the  same  time,  an  army  of  men  from  Con- 
necticut, New  Jersey,  and  New  York,  Palatine  emigrants, 
and  about  six  hundred  Iroquois,  assembling  at  Albany,  pre- 
pared to  burst  upon  Montreal ;  while  at  the  west,  in  AYis- 
consin,  the  English  had,  through  the  Iroquois,  obtained 
allies  in  the  Foxes,  ever  wishing  to  expel  the  French  from 
Michigan. 

The  news  of  the  intended  expedition  was  seasonably  re- 
ceived in  Quebec ;  and  the  measures  of  defence  began  by 
a  renewal  of  friendship  with  the  Indians.  To  deputies 
from  the  Onondagas  and  Senecas,  the  governor  spoke  of  the 
fidelity  with  which  the  French  had  kept  their  treaty ;  and 
he  reminded  them  of  their  promise  to  remain  quiet  upon 
their  mats. 

A  great  war  festival  was  next  held,  at  which  were  present 
all  the  savages  domiciliated  near  the  French  settlements, 
and  all  the  delegates  of  their  allies  who  had  come  down  to 
Montreal.  In  the  presence  of  seven  or  eight  hundred  war- 
riors, the  war-song  was  sung  and  the  hatchet  uplifted. 
The  savages  of  the  remote  west  were  wavering,  till  twenty 
Hurons  from  Detroit  took  up  the  hatchet,  and  swayed  all 
the  rest  by  their  example.  The  influence  of  the  Jesuits  had 
never  been  so  manifest :  by  their  power  over  the  natives, 
an  alliance  extending  to  the  Chippewas  constituted  the  de- 
fence of  Montreal. 


382  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXV. 

Descending  to  Quebec,  Yaudreuil  found  Abenaki  volun- 
teers assembling  for  his  protection.  Measures  for  resistance 
had  been  adopted  with  hearty  earnestness  ;  the  fortifications 
were  strengthened  ;  Beauport  was  garrisoned  ;  and  the  peo- 
ple were  resolute  and  confiding,  even  women  were  ready  to 
labor  for  the  common  defence. 

The  approach  of  the  fleet  was  impatiently  watched 
Au^g.^23.  ^<^^-     Towards  the  last  of  August,  it  was  said  that 

peasants  at  Matanes  had  descried  ninety  or  ninety-six 
vessels  with  the  English  flag.  Yet  September  came,  and 
still  from  the  heights  of  Cape  Diamond  no  eye  caught  one 
sail  of  the  expected  enemy. 

The  English  squadron,  leaving  Boston  on  the  thirtieth  of 

July,  after  loitering  near  the  Bay  of  Gaspe,  at  last 
u-fo.      began  to  ascend  the  St.  Lawrence ;  while  Sir  Hoven- 

den  Walker  puzzled  himself  with  contriving  how 
he  should  secure  his  vessels  during  the  winter  at  Quebec. 
Fearing  "  the  ice  in  the  river,  freezing  to  the  bottom,  would 
bilge  them,  as  much  as  if  they  were  to  be  squeezed  between 
rocks,"  he  could  think  of  no  way  but  to  disencumber  them, 
"  and  secure  them  on  the  dry  ground,  in  frames  and  cradles, 
till  the  thaw."  While  ascending  the  river,  which  he  took  to 
be  "  a  hundred  fathom  deep,"  on  the  evening  of  the  twenty- 
second  of  August,  a  thick  fog  came  on,  with  an  easterly 
breeze.  The  pilots,  with  one  accord,  advised  that  the  fleet 
should  lie  to,  with  the  heads  of  the  vessels  to  the  southward  : 
this  was  done,  and,  even  so,  the  vessels  were  carried  towards 
the  northern  shore.  Just  as  Walker  was  going  to  bed,  the 
captain  of  his  ship  came  down  to  say  that  land  could  be 
seen;  and,  without  going  on  deck,  the  admiral  wantonly 
ordered  the  ships  to  head  to  the  north.  There  was  on  the 
quarter-deck  a  man  of  sense,  —  Goddard,  a  captain  in  the 
land  service :  he  rushed  to  the  cabin  in  great  haste,  and 
importuned  the  admiral  at  least  to  come  on  deck ;  but 
the  self-willed  man  laughed  at  his  fears,  and  refused.  A 
second  time  Goddard  returned.  "For  the  Lord's  sake, 
come  on  deck,"  cried  he,  "or  we  shall  certainly  be  lost;  I 
see  breakers  all  around  us !  "  "  Putting  on  my  gown  and 
slippers,"  writes  Walker,  "  and  coming  up  on  deck,  I  found 


1712.         THE  WAR  OF  THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION.         383 

what  he  told  me  to  be  true."  Even  then  the  blind  admiral 
shouted,  "I  see  no  land  to  the  leeward!"  but  the  moon, 
breaking  through  the  mists,  gave  him  the  lie.  The  fleet 
was  close  upon  the  north  shore,  among  the  Egg  Islands. 
Now  the  admiral  believed  the  pilots,  and  made  sail  immedi- 
ately for  the  middle  of  the  river  ;  but  morning  showed  that 
eight  ships  had  been  wrecked,  and  eight  hundred  and 
eighty-four  men  drowned.  A  council  of  war  voted  unani- 
mously that  it  was  impossible  to  proceed.  "  Had  we  arrived 
safe  at  Quebec,"  wrote  the  admiral,  "  ten  or  twelve  thou- 
sand men  must  have  been  left  to  perish  of  cold  and  hunger : 
by  the  loss  of  a  part.  Providence  saved  all  the  rest ! "  and 
he  expected  public  honors  for  his  retreat,  which  to  him 
seemed  as  glorious  as  a  victory. 

Such  was  the  issue  of  hostilities  in  the  north-east.  Their 
total  failure  left  the  expedition  from  Albany  no  option  but 
to  return,  and  Montreal  was  unmolested.  Detroit, 
though  not  till  the  next  year,  almost  fell  before  the  1712. 
valor  of  a  party  of  the  Ottagamies,  or  Foxes ;  a  nation 
passionate  and  untamable,  springing  up  into  new  life  from 
every  defeat,  and  though  reduced  in  the  number  of  their 
warriors,  yet  present  everywhere  by  their  ferocious  daring. 
Resolving  to  burn  Detroit,  they  pitched  their  lodgings  near 
the  fort,  which  Du  Buisson,  with  but  twenty  Frenchmen, 
defended.  Aware  of  their  intention,  he  summoned  his 
Indian  allies  from  the  chase ;  and,  about  the  middle  of  May, 
Ottawas  and  Hurons  and  Pottawatomies,  with  one  branch 
of  the  Sacs,  Illinois,  Menomonies,  and  even  Osages  and  Mis- 
souris,  each  nation  with  its  own  ensign,  came  to  his  relief. 
So  wide  was  the  influence  of  the  missionaries  in  the  west. 
"  Father,"  said  they,  "  behold  !  thy  children  compass  thee 
round.  We  will,  if  need  be,  gladly  die  for  our  father ;  only 
take  care  of  our  wives  and  our  children,  and  spread  a  little 
grass  over  our  bodies  to  protect  them  against  the  flies."  The 
warriors  of  the  Fox  nation,  far  from  destroying  Detroit,  were 
themselves  besieged,  and  at  last  compelled  to  surrender  at 
discretion.  Those  who  bore  arms  were  ruthlessly  murdered ; 
the  rest  disti'ibuted  as  slaves  among  the  confederates,  to  be 
saved  or  massacred,  at  the  will  of  their  masters.    Cherished 


384 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXV. 


as  the  loveliest  spot  in  Canada,  the  possession  of  Detroit 
secured  for  Quebec  the  great  highways  to  the  Mississippi 
and  intercourse  with  the  upper  Indian  tribes. 

The  Tuscaroras  changed  their  dwelling-place  during  the 
war.  Their  chiefs  had  become  indignant  at  the  encroach- 
ments of  the  proprietaries  of  Carolina,  who  had  assigned  their 
lands  to  Palatines,  fugitives  from  the  banks  of  the  Neckar 
and  the  Rhine.  De  Graffenried,  who  had  undertaken  the 
establisliment  of  the  exiles,  accompanied  by  Lawson,  the 
surveyor-general  for  the  northern  province,  in  Sep- 
Sept.  tember  of  1711  ascended  the  Neuse  River,  to  discover 
how  far  it  was  navigable  and  through  what  kind  of 
country  it  flowed.  Seized  by  a  party  of  sixty  well-armed 
Indians,  they  were  taken  to  a  village  of  the  Tuscaroras. 
Before  a  council  of  the  principal  men  from  various  towns 
of  the  tribe,  complaint  was  made  of  the  conduct  of  the  Eng- 
lish in  Carolina,  and  especially  of  the  severity  of  Lawson. 
He,  who  with  his  compass  and  chain  had  marked  their  ter- 
ritory into  lots  for  settlers,  was  reproved  as  "  the  man  who 
sold  their  land."  After  a  discussion  of  two  days,  the  death 
of  the  prisoners  was  decreed.  The  fire  was  kindled ;  the 
ring  drawn  round  the  victims,  and  strown  with  flowers. 
On  the  morning  appointed  for  the  execution,  a  council 
assembled  anew.  Round  the  white  men  sat  the  chiefs  in 
two  rows ;  behind  them  were  three  hundred  of  the  people, 
engaged  in  dances.  No  reprieve  was  granted  to  Law^son ; 
but  Graffenried,  on  pledging  his  people  to  neutrality  and 
promising  to  occupy  no  land  without  the  consent  of  the 
tribe,  was  suffered  after  a  captivity  of  five  weeks  to  retura 
through  the  woods  on  foot.  He  came  back  to  deso- 
Sept.  22.  lated  settlements.  On  the  twenty-second  of  Septem- 
ber, small  bands  of  the  Tuscaroras  and  Corees,  acting 
in  concert,  approached  the  scattered  cabins  along  the  Roan- 
oke and  Pamlico  Sound.  As  night  came  on,  a  whoop 
from  a  warrior  called  his  associates  from  the  woods,  to 
commence  the  indiscriminate  carnage.  The  Palatines  now 
encountered  a  foe  more  fierce  than  Louvois  and  Louis 
XIV.  At  Bath,  the  Huguenot  refugees,  and  the  planters 
in  their  neighborhood,  were  struck  down  by  aid  of  light 


1713.         THE  WAR  OF  THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION.         385 

from  their  own  burning  cabins.  In  the  three  following 
days,  the  savages  scoured  the  country  on  the  Albemarle 
Sound. 

Not  all  the  Tuscaroras  had  joined  in  the  conspiracy : 
Spotswood  sought  to  renew  with  them  an  alliance ;  but,  as 
the  burgesses  of  Virginia  engaged  with  him  in  a  contest  of 
power,  no  effectual  aid  came  from  the  Old  Dominion.  The 
assembly  of  South  Carolina  promptly  voted  relief  ;  and,  de- 
fying the  hardships  of  a  long  march  through  the  wilderness, 
Barnwell,  with  Cherokees,  Creeks,  Catawbas,  and  Yamassees 
as  allies,  led  a  small  detachment  of  militia  to  the  banks  of 
Neuse  River.  There,  in  the  upper  part  of  Craven  county, 
the  Indians  were  intrenched  in  a  rude  fort.  With  the  aid 
of  a  few  soldiers  of  North  Carolina,  the  fort  was  besieged; 
but  even  imminent  danger  had  not  roused  its  inhabitants  to 
harmonious  action ;  they  retained  their  hatred  for  the  rule 
of  the  proprietaries,  and  Barnwell  could  only  negotiate  with 
the  Indians  a  treaty  of  peace. 

The  troops  of  South  Carolina,  on  their  return,  themselves 
violated  the  treaty,  enslaving  inhabitants  of  villages  which 
should  have  been  safe  under  its  guarantees ;  and  the  mas- 
sacres on  Neuse  River  were  renewed.     The  province  was 
impoverished,  the  people  dissatisfied  with  their  gov- 
ernment ;  in  autumn,  the  yellow  fever  raged  in  its      g^^^; 
most  malignant  form  ;  and  the  country  south  of  Pam- 
lico Sound  seemed  destined  to  become  once  more  a  wilder- 
ness.   But  Spotswood  succeeded  in  dividing  the  Tus- 
caroras.   Large  re-enforcements  of  Indians  from  South       Y)ec* 
Carolina  arrived,  with  a  few  white  men,  under  James 
Moore ;  the  enemy  were  pursued  to  their  fort,  within  the 
limits  of  the  present  Greene  county,  on  the  Neuse ; 
and,  on  its  surrender,  eight  hundred  became  captives.    jyJaJch 
The  legislature  of  North  Carolina,  assembling  in  May, 
under  a  new  governor,  issued  its  first  bills  of  credit  to  the 
amount  of  eight  thousand  pounds;  "the  very  refractory" 
among  the  people  grew  zealous  to  supply  the  forces  with 
provisions ;   the   enemy  was    chased   across   the  lakes  and 
swamps  of  Hyde  county ;  the  woods  were  patrolled  by  red 
allies,  who  hunted  for  prisoners  to   be   sold  as  slaves,  or 
VOL.  II.  26 


386 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXV. 


1713.  *ook  scalps  for  a  reward.  At  last,  the  hostile  part  of 
June,  the  Tuscaroras  abandoned  their  old  hunting-grounds, 
and,  migrating  to  the  vicinity  of  the  Oneida  Lake,  were  wel- 
comed by  their  kindred  of  the  Iroquois  as  the  sixth  nation  of 

their  confederacy.  Their  humbled  allies  were  estab- 
1715.       lished  as  a  single  settlement  in  the  precincts  of  Hyde. 

The  power  of  the  natives  of  North  Carolina  was 
broken,  and  its  interior  made  safe  to  the  emigrant. 

In  the  mean  time,  the  preliminaries  of  a  treaty  had  been 
signed  between  France  and  England ;  and  the  war,  which 
had  grown  out  of  European  changes  and  convulsions,  was 
suspended  by  negotiations  that  were  soon  followed  by  the 
uncertain  peace  of  Utrecht. 

In  1706,  the  victories  of  Ramillies  and  of  Turin  were 

equally  fatal ;  and  France,  driven  from  its  outposts, 
1708.       was  compelled  to  struggle  for  the  defence  of  its  own 

soil.  The  aged  monarch  was  humbled  in  arms,  re- 
duced in  power,  chagrined  by  the  visible  decline  of  the 
prosperity  of  his  kingdom,  dejected  at  the  loss  of  foreign 

provinces.  His  children,  his  grandchildren,  all  but 
Ai^T^'29.  ^"®  infant,  were  swept  away.    For  the  sake  of  peace, 

he  offered  to  "make  a  sacrifice  of  his  glory,"  and 
assent  to  the  dethronement  of  his  grandson.  The  confed- 
erates demanded  that  he  should  himself  expel  his  grandson 
from  the  Spanish  throne.  "If  I  must  have  war,"  he  an- 
swered, "  it  shall  not  be  with  my  children  ; "  and  he  began 
to  enlist  on  his  side  the  sympathies  of  the  dispassionate. 
From  the  banks  of  the  Danube,  the  Tagus,  and  the  Po,  his 
armies  had  been  driven  back  into  his  own  kingdom.  France 
could  not  threaten  England  with  a  king,  or  Holland  with 
conquest,  or  the  emperor  with  rivalry  in  the  empire.  The 
party  of  peace  grew  every  day.  Besides,  the  archduke 
Charles,  whom  the  allies  had  proposed  as  king  of  Spain, 
was,  by  the  death  of  Joseph,  become  emperor.  If  the 
sovereign  over  the  Austrian  dominions,  and  head  of  the 
empire,  should  possess  the  undivided  Spanish  monarchy, 
the  days  of  Charles  V.  would  return. 

The  debility  of  France  became  its  safety,  and  the  accu- 
mulated power  of  the  archduke  was  the  prevailing  motive 


I 


1713.         THE  WAR  OF  THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION.         387 

for  neglecting  his  claims.  Moreover,  success  in  arms  had, 
in  1710,  under  the  auspices  of  the  victorious  Duke  de  Ven- 
dorae  and  with  the  applause  of  the  Spanish  nation,  conducted 
Philip  V.  to  Madrid.  His  expulsion  was  become  impossible. 
In  England,  where  public  opinion  could  reach  the  govern- 
ment, the  tories  came  into  power  as  the  party  of  peace. 
Marlborough,  who  gave  utterance  to  the  sentiment  that  the 
enmity  between  England  and  France  was  irreconcilable, 
was  dismissed. 

The  treaty  of  peace  concluded  at  Utrecht  closed  1713. 
the  series  of  universal  wars  for  the  balance  of  power,  ^p''*  ^^' 
The  Netherlands  were  the  barrier  against  French  encroach- 
ment ;  they  were  severed  from  Spain,  and  assigned  to 
Austria,  as  the  second  land  power  on  the  continent.  The 
house  of  Savoy  was  raised  to  the  rank  of  royalty ;  and 
Sicily  at  first,  afterwards,  instead  of  Sicily,  the  Island  of 
Sardinia,  was  added  to  its  sceptre.  The  kingdom  of  Naples, 
at  first  divided  between  the  houses  of  Savoy  and  Austria, 
soon  became  united,  and  was  constituted  a  secundogeniture 
of  Spain.  These  subordinate  changes  were  not  inconsistent 
with  the  policy  of  the  peace  of  Utrecht,  and  were  therefore, 
at  a  later  day,  effected  without  a  general  conflagration  of 
Europe.  For  the  house  of  Brandenburg,  as  for  that  of 
Savoy,  a  monarchy  was  established.  We  shall  presently 
see  its  intimate  relation  to  the  fortunes  of  our  country. 
The  balance  of  power,  as  far  as  France  and  England  were 
interested  on  the  continent,  was  arranged  in  a  manner  that 
might  have  permitted  between  the  two  neighbors  a  perpetual 
peace. 

The  war  between  England  and  France  had  been  not  only 
a  contest  for  the  balance  of  power  on  the  continent,  but 
a  conflict  of  opinions ;  and  this,  also,  was  amicably  settled. 
France  assented  to  the  emancipation  of  England  from  the 
maxims  of  legitimacy,  and  not  only  recognised  the  reigning 
queen,  but  the  succession  to  the  crown,  as  vested  in  the 
house  of  Hanover  by  act  of  parliament.  For  Spain,  it  com- 
promised the  question,  vindicating  the  right  of  succession 
for  the  family  of  the  Bourbons,  but  agreeing  that  the  two 
crowns  should  never  be  united.    On  the  other  hand,  England 


388  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXV. 

took  no  interest  in  any  question  of  freedom  agitated  on  the 
continent,  and  never  in  a  single  instance  asserted,  or  was 
suspected  of  asserting,  any  increase  of  popular  power.  Its 
faithful  allies,  the  Catalonians,  had  maintained  their  liberties 
inherited  from  the  middle  age  :  the  abolition  of  these  liber- 
ties was  their  punishment  from  the  Bourbons  for  having 
joined  the  opposition  to  legitimacy;  and,  in  the  treaty  of 
peace,  England  mocked  them  by  a  clause  which  promised 
them  "  the  privileges  of  Castile," — that  is,  the  loss  of  all  their 
own  liberties.  The  absolute  monarchy  of  the  continent  had 
no  dread  of  Great  Britain  as  the  supporter  in  arms  of  revo- 
lutionary principles.  The  principles  which  were  springing 
into  activity  on  the  borders  of  the  wilderness  were  not  con- 
sidered ;  European  revolutions  and  European  wars  for  opin- 
ion seemed  for  ever  at  an  end. 

And  yet  the  treaty  of  peace  at  Utrecht  scattered  the 
seeds  of  war  broadcast  throughout  the  globe.  The 
world  had  entered  on  the  period  of  mercantile  privilege.  In- 
stead of  establishing  equal  justice,  England  sought  commer- 
cial advantages  ;  and,  as  the  mercantile  system  was  identified 
with  the  colonial  system  of  the  great  maritime  powers  of 
Europe,  the  political  interest,  which  could  alone  kindle  uni- 
versal war,  was  to  be  sought  in  the  colonies.  Hitherto,  the 
colonies  were  subordinate  to  European  politics :  hencefor- 
ward, the  question  of  trade  on  our  borders,  of  territory  on 
our  frontier,  involved  an  interest  which  could  excite  the 
world  to  arms.  For  about  two  centuries,  the  wars  of 
religion  had  prevailed ;  the  wars  for  commercial  advan- 
tages were  now  prepared.  The  interests  of  commerce, 
under  the  narrow  point  of  view  of  privilege  and  of  profit, 
regulated  diplomacy,  swayed  legislation,  and  marshalled 
revolutions. 

First,  then,  by  the  peace  of  Utrecht,  Spain  lost  all  her 
European  provinces  and  retained  all  her  colonies.  The 
mother  country,  being  thus  left  with  a  population  of  but 
six  or  seven  millions,  had  no  strength  proportionate  to  the 
vast  extent  of  her  colonial  possessions.  She  held  them  not 
by  physical  force,  but  by  the  power  of  established  interests, 
usages,  and  religion ;  and  in  some  measure  on  sufferance,  at 


1713.         THE  WAR  OF  THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION.        389 

the  will  of  the  maritime  powers  which  aspired  to  the  domin- 
ion of  the  seas.  Great  Britain,  moreover,  remained  in  pos- 
session of  Gibraltar,  her  strongest  fortress,  the  key  to  the 
Mediterranean.  By  insisting  on  the  cession  of  the  Spanish 
Netherlands  to  Austria,  England  lost  its  only  hold  on  Spain  ; 
and,  by  taking  Gibraltar,  made  her  its  implacable  enemy. 

Again,  by  the  peace  of  Utrecht,  Belgium  was  compelled 
to  forego  the  advantages  with  which  she  had  been  endowed 
by  the  God  of  nature ;  to  gratify  commercial  jealousy, 
Antwerp  was  denied  the  use  of  the  deep  waters  that  flowed 
by  her  walls ;  and  the  Austrian  efforts  at  trade  with  the 
East  Indies  were  suffocated  in  their  infancy.  This  policy 
was  an  open  violation  of  international  justice  ;  a  fraud  upon 
humanity  ;  a  restriction,  by  covenant,  of  national  industry 
and  prosperity.  It  was  a  pledge  that  Belgium  would  look 
beyond  treaties,  and  grow  familiar  with  natural  rights. 

With  regard  to  France,  one  condition  of  the  treaty  was 
still  worse.  England  extorted  the  covenant  that  the  port 
of  Dunkirk  should  be  filled  up.  A  treaty  of  peace  contained 
a  stipulation  for  the  ruin  of  a  harbor  ! 

On  the  opening  of  the  contest  with  France,  William  III., 
though  bearing  the  standard  of  freedom,  was  false  to  the 
principle  of  the  liberty  of  the  seas,  prohibiting  all 
commerce  with  France  ;  and  to  the  protest  of  Hoi-  au^22. 
land  he  gave  no  other  reply  than  that  it  was  his  will, 
and   that  he   had  power  to  make   it  good.     To   the  tory 
ministry  of  Queen  Anne  belongs  the  honor  of  hav- 
ing   inserted   in   the   treaties    of   peace    a   principle       1713. 
which,  but  for  England,  would   in   that  generation 
have  wanted  a  vindicator.     But  truth,  once  elicited,  never 
dies.     As  it  descends  through  time,  it  may  be  transmitted 
from  state  to  state,  from  monarch  to  commonwealth  ;  but 
its  light  is  never  extinguished,  and  never  permitted  to  fall 
to  the  ground.     A  great  truth,  if  no  existing  nation  would 
assume  its  guardianship,  has  power  —  such  is  God's  provi- 
dence —  to  call  a  nation  into  being,  and  live  by  the  life  it 
imparts.     What  Holland  asserted,  England  kept  alive,  and 
Prussia  received,  till  it  was  safe  against  any  possible  combi- 
nation.    The  idea  which  Grotius  promulgated,  Bolingbroke 


390  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXV. 

fostered,  till  the  great  Frederic  could  become  its  champion, 
and  the  continent  of  Europe  invoke  America  to  secure  its 
triumph.  "  Free  ships,"  such  was  international  law,  as  in- 
terpreted by  England  at  Utrecht,  "  free  ships  shall  also  give 
a  freedom  to  goods."  The  name  of  contraband  was  nar- 
rowly defined,  and  the  right  of  blockade  severely  limited. 
Sailors,  in  those  days,  needed  no  special  protections  ;  for  it 
was  covenanted  that,  with  the  exception  of  soldiers  in  the 
actual  service  of  the  enemy,  the  flag  shall  protect  the  per- 
sons that  sail  under  it. 

But  the  assiento,  as  the  agreement  respecting  the  slave- 
trade  was  called,  was,  for  English  America,  the  most 
weighty  result  of  the  negotiations  at  Utrecht.  It  was  de- 
manded by  Saint-John,  in  1711 ;  and  Louis  XIV.  promised 
his  good  offices  to  procure  this  advantage  for  the  English. 
"  Her  Britannic  majesty  did  o:ffer  and  undertake,"  such  are 
the  words  of  the  treaty,  "by  persons  whom  she  shall  ap- 
point, to  bring  into  the  West  Indies  of  America  belonging 
to  his  Catholic  majesty,  in  the  space  of  thirty  years,  one 
hundred  and  forty-four  thousand  negroes,  at  the  rate  of  four 
thousand  eight  hundred  in  each  of  the  said  thirty  years ; " 
paying,  on  four  thousand  of  them,  a  duty  of  thirty-three 
and  a  third  dollars  a  head.  The  assientists  might  introduce 
as  many  more  as  they  pleased,  at  the  less  rate  of  duty  of 
sixteen  and  two  thirds  dollars  a  head ;  only,  no  scandal  was 
to  be  offered  to  the  Roman  Catholic  religion !  Exactest 
care  was  taken  to  secure  a  monopoly.  No  Frenchman,  nor 
Spaniard,  nor  any  other  persons,  might  introduce  one  negro 
slave  into  Spanish  America.  For  the  Spanish  world  in  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico,  on  the  Atlantic,  and  along  the  Pacific,  as 
well  as  for  the  English  colonies,  her  Britannic  majesty,  by 
persons  of  her  appointment,  was  the  exclusive  slave-trader. 
England  extorted  the  privilege  of  filling  the  New  World  with 
negroes.  As  great  profits  were  anticipated  from  the  trade, 
Philip  Y.  of  Spain  took  one  quarter  of  the  common  stock, 
agreeing  to  pay  for  it  by  a  stock-note  ;  Queen  Anne  reserved 
to  herself  another  quarter ;  and  the  remaining  moiety  was 
to  be  divided  among  her  subjects.  The  sovereigns  of  Eng- 
land and  Spain  became  the  largest  slave-merchants  in  the 


THE  WAR  OF  THE  SPANISH  SUCCESSION.         391 

world.  Lady  Masham  promised  herself  a  share  of  the 
profits  ;  but  Harley,  who  had  good  sense  and  was  most  free 
from  avarice,  advised  the  assignment  of  the  queen's  portion 
of  the  stock  to  the  South  Sea  company. 

Controlling  the  trade  in  slaves,  who  cost  nothing  but 
trinkets  and  toys  and  refuse  arms,  England  gained,  by  the 
sale  of  the  children  of  Africa  into  bondage  in  America,  the 
capital  which  built  up  and  confirmed  a  British  empire  in 
Hindostan.  The  political  effects  of  this  trafiic  were  equally 
perceptible  in  the  West  Indies.  The  mercantile  system,  of 
which  the  colonial  system  was  the  essential  branch,  culmi- 
nated in  the  slave-trade  and  the  commercial  policy  adopted 
with  regard  to  the  chief  produce  of  slave-labor.  The  states- 
men who  befriended  the  system  of  colonial  monopoly  showed 
their  highest  favor  to  the  sugar  colonies. 

Further,  England,  guarding  with  the  utmost  strictness  the 
monopoly  of  her  own  colonisil  trade,  encroached  by  treaty 
on  the  colonial  monopoly  of  Spain.  There  shall  be  trade,  it 
was  said,  between  Great  Britain  and  Spain,  and  their  re- 
spective plantations  and  provinces,  "  where  hitherto  trade 
and  commerce  have  been  accustomed ; "  so  that  a  prescrip- 
tive right  might  spring  from  the  continued  successes  of 
British  smugglers.  Besides,  as  England  gained  the  assiento, 
it  was  agreed  that  the  agents  of  the  assientists  might  enter 
all  the  ports  of  Spanish  America ;  might  send  their  factors 
into  inland  places  ;  might,  for  their  own  supplies,  establish 
warehouses,  safe  against  search  until  after  proof  of  fraudu- 
lent importations ;  might  send  yearly  a  ship  of  five  hundred 
tons,  laden  with  merchandise,  to  be  entered  free  of  all  duties 
in  the  Indies,  and  to  be  sold  at  the  annual  fair ;  might  send 
the  returns  of  this  traffic,  whether  bars  of  silver,  ingots  of 
gold,  or  the  produce  of  the  country,  directly  to  Europe  in 
English  vessels.  The  hope  was  further  expressed  that, 
from  Europe  and  the  North  American  colonies,  direct  sup- 
plies might  be  furnished  to  the  assientists  in  small  vessels ; 
that  is,  in  vessels  best  fitted  to  engage  in  smuggling.  Here, 
also,  lay  the  seeds  of  war  :  the  great  colonial  monopolists 
were  divided  against  each  other ;  and  England  sought  to 
engross,  if  possible,  every  advantage.     Many  were  the  con- 


392  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXV. 

sequences  to  our  fathers  from  these  encroachments  :  they 
opened  trade  between  our  colonies  and  the  Spanish  islands ; 
they  stimulated  England  to  aggressions  which  led  to  a  war ; 
they  incensed  Spain,  so  that  she  could  wish  to  see  the  great 
colonial  system  impaired,  if  by  that  means  she  could  revenge 
herself  on  England. 

Finally,  England,  by  the  peace  of  Utrecht,  obtained  from 
France  large  concessions  of  territory  in  America.  The 
assembly  of  New  York  had  addressed  the  queen  against 
French  settlements  in  the  west ;  William  Penn  advised  to 
establish  the  St.  Lawrence  as  the  boundary  on  the  north, 
and  to  include  in  our  colonies  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi. 
It  "  will  make  a  glorious  country : "  such  were  his  prophetic 
words.  Spotswood  of  Virginia,  again  and  again,  directed 
the  attention  of  the  English  ministry  to  the  progress  of  the 
French  in  the  west.  The  colony  of  Louisiana  excited  in 
Saint-John  "  apprehensions  of  the  future  undertakings  of 
the  French  in  North  America."  The  occupation  of  the 
Mississippi  valley  had  been  proposed  to  Queen  Anne  ;  yet, 
at  the  peace,  that  immense  region  remained  to  France.  But 
England  obtained  the  entire  possession  of  the  Bay  of  Hud- 
son and  its  borders ;  of  Newfoundland,  subject  to  the  rights 
of  France  in  its  fisheries ;  and  of  all  Nova  Scotia,  or  Acadia, 
according  to  its  ancient  boundaries.  It  was  agreed,  also, 
that  "  France  should  never  molest  the  Five  Nations  subject 
to  the  dominion  of  Great  Britain."  But  Louisian-a,  accord- 
ing to  French  ideas,  included  the  whole  basin  of  the  Missis- 
sippi. Did  the  treaty  of  Utrecht  assent  to  such  an  extension 
of  French  territory  ?  And  what  were  the  ancient  limits  of 
Acadia  ?  Did  it  include  all  that  is  now  New  Brunswick  ? 
or  had  France  still  a  large  territory  on  the  Atlantic  between 
Acadia  and  Maine  ?  And  what  were  the  bounds  of  the  ter- 
ritory of  the  Five  Nations,  which  the  treaty  appeared  to 
recognise  as  a  part  of  the  English  dominions  ?  These  were 
questions  which  were  never  to  be  adjusted  amicably. 


i 


1720.  INDIANS  EAST  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI.  393 


CHAPTER   XXXVI. 

THE    ABORIGINES   EAST    OF    THE    MISSISSIPPI. 

On  the  surrender  of  Acadia  to  England,  the  lakes,  the 
rivulets,  the  granite  ledges  of  Cape  Breton,  of  which  the 
irregular  outline  is  guarded  by  reefs  of  rocks,  and  notched 
and  almost  rent  asunder  by  the  constant  action  of  the  sea, 
were  immediately  occupied  as  a  province  of  France  ;  and, 
in  1714,  fugitives  from  Newfoundland  and  Acadia  built 
their  huts  along  its  coasts  wherever  safe  inlets  invited 
fishermen  to  spread  their  flakes,  and  the  soil  to  plant 
fields  and  gardens.  In  a  few  years,  the  fortifications  1720. 
of  Louisburg  began  to  rise,  the  key  to  the  St.  Law- 
rence, the  bulwark  of  the  French  fisheries,  and  of  French 
commerce  in  North  America.  From  Cape  Breton,  the  do- 
minion of  Louis  XIV.  extended  up  the  St.  Lawrence  to 
Lake  Superior,  and  from  that  lake  through  the  whole 
course  of  the  Mississippi,  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  the  Bay 
of  Mobile.  Just  beyond  that  bay  began  the  posts  of  the 
Spaniards,  which  continued  round  the  shores  of  Florida 
to  the  fortress  of  St.  Augustine.  The  English  colonies 
skirted  the  Atlantic,  extending  from  Florida  to  the  eastern 
verge  of  Nova  Scotia.  Thus,  if  on  the  east  the  Strait  of 
Canso  divided  France  and  England,  if  on  the  south  a 
narrow  range  of  forests  intervened  between  England  and 
Spain,  everywhere  else  the  colonies  of  the  rival  nations 
were  separated  from  each  other  by  tribes  of  the  natives. 
The  Europeans  had  encompassed  the  aborigines  that  dwelt 
east  of  the  Mississippi  by  a  circle  of  posts ;  and,  however 
eager  might  now  be  the  passion  of  the  intruders  for  carving 
their  emblems  on  trees  and  designating  their  lines  of  an- 
ticipated empire  on  maps,  their  respective  settlements  were 


394  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVI. 

kept  asunder  by  an  unexplored  wilderness,  of  which  savages 
were  the  occupants.  The  great  strife  of  France  and  Eng- 
land for  American  territory  could  not,  therefore,  but  in- 
volve the  ancient  possessors  of  the  continent  in  a  series  of 
conflicts,  which  have  at  last  banished  the  Indian  tribes 
from  the  earlier  limits  of  our  republic.  If  a  melancholy 
interest  attaches  to  the  fall  of  a  hero  who  is  overpowered 
by  superior  force,  shall  we  not  have  compassion  for  nations 
whose  defeat  foreboded  the  exile,  if  it  did  not  indeed  shadow 
forth  the  decline  and  ultimate  extinction,  of  a  race  ? 

The  earliest  books  on  America  contained  tales  as  wild  as 
fancy  could  invent  or  credulity  repeat.  The  land  was  peo- 
pled with  pygmies  and  with  giants ;  the  tropical  forests 
were  said  to  conceal  tribes  of  negroes  ;  and  tenants  of  the 
hyperborean  regions  were  white,  like  the  polar  bear  or  the 
ermine.  Jaques  Cartier  had  heard  of  a  nation  that  did  not 
eat ;  and  the  pedant  Lafitau  believed,  if  not  in  a  species  of 
headless  men,  at  least  that  there  were  men  with  the  head 
not  rising  above  the  shoulders. 

Yet  the  first  aspect  of  the  original  inhabitants  of  the 
United  States  was  uniform.  Between  the  Indians  of  Flor- 
ida and  Canada,  the  difference  was  scarcely  perceptible. 
Their  manners  and  institutions,  as  well  as  their  organiza^ 
tion,  had  a  common  physiognomy;  and,  before  their  lan- 
guages began  to  be  known,  there  was  no  safe  method  of 
grouping  the  nations  into  families.  But,  when  the  vast 
variety  of  dialects  came  to  be  compared,  there  were  found 
east  of  the  Mississippi  not  more  than  eight  radically  distinct 
languages,  of  which  five  still  constitute  the  speech  of  power- 
ful communities,  and  three  are  known  only  as  memorials  of 
tribes  that  have  disappeared. 

I.  The  primitive  language  which  was  the  most  widely 
diffused,  and  the  most  fertile  in  dialects,  received  from  the 
French  the  name  of  Algonkiit.  It  was  the  mother  tongue 
of  those  who  greeted  the  colonists  of  Raleigh  at  Roanoke, 
of  those  who  welcomed  the  pilgrims  to  Plymouth.  It  was 
heard  from  the  Bay  of  Gaspe  to  the  valley  of  the  Des 
Moines ;  from  Cape  Fear,  and,  it  may  be,  from  the  Savan- 
nah, to  the  land  of  the  Esquimaux ;  from  the  Cumberland 


Chap.  XXXVI.    INDIANS  EAST  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI.        395 

River  of  Kentucky  to  the  southern  bank  of  the  Missinipi. 
It  was  spoken,  though  not  exclusively,  in  a  territory  that 
extended  through  sixty  degrees  of  longitude  and  more 
than  twenty  degrees  of  latitude. 

The  Micmacs,  who  occupied  the  east  of  the  continent, 
south  of  the  little  tribe  that  dwelt  round  the  Bay  of  Gaspe, 
held  possession  of  Nova  Scotia  and  the  adjacent  isles,  and 
probably  never  much  exceeded  three  thousand  in  number. 
They  were  known  to  our  fathers  only  as  the  active  allies  of 
the  French ;  they  often  invaded,  but  never  inhabited,  New 
England. 

The  Etchemins,  or  Canoemen,  dwelt  not  only  on  the  St. 
John's  River,  the  Ouygondy  of  the  natives,  but  on  the  St. 
Croix,  which  Champlain  always  called  from  their  name, 
and  extended  as  far  west,  at  least,  as  Mount  Desert. 

Next  to  these  came  the  Abenakis,  of  whom  one  tribe  has 
left  its  name  to  the  Penobscot,  and  another  to  the  Andro- 
scoggin ;  while  a  third,  under  the  auspices  of  Jesuits,  had 
its  chapel  and  its  fixed  abode  in  the  fertile  fields  of  Nor- 
ridgewock. 

The  clans  that  disappeared  from  their  ancient  hunting- 
grounds  did  not  always  become  extinct ;  they  often  mi- 
grated to  the  north  and  west.  Of  the  Sokokis,  who  appear 
to  have  dwelt  near  Saco,  and  to  have  had  an  alliance 
with  the  Mohawks,  many,  at  an  early  day,  abandoned  1646. 
the  region  where  they  first  became  known  to  Euro- 
pean voyagers,  and  placed  themselves  under  the  shelter  of 
the  French  in  Canada.  The  example  of  emigration  was 
often  followed;  the  savage  shunned  the  vicinity  of  the 
civilized :  among  the  tribes  of  Texas,  there  are  warriors 
who  are  said  to  trace  their  lineage  to  Algonkins  on  the 
Atlantic ;  and  descendants  from  the  New  England  Indians 
now  roam  over  western  prairies. 

The  forests  beyond  the  Saco,  New  Hampshire,  and  the 
country  as  far  as  Salem,  constituted  the  sachemship  of  Pena- 
cook,  or  Pawtucket,  and  often  afforded  a  refuge  to  the  rem- 
nants of  feebler  nations  around  them.  The  tribe  of  the 
Massachusetts,  even  before  the  colonization  of  the  country, 
had  almost  disappeared  from  the  shores  of  the  bay  that 

.OF  THE 


396  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVI. 

bears  its  name ;  and  the  villages  of  the  interior  resembled 
insulated  and  nearly  independent  bands,  that  had  lost  them- 
selves in  the  wilderness. 

Of  the  Pokanokets,  who  dwelt  round  Mount  Hope,  and 
were  sovereigns  over  Nantucket,  Martha's  Vineyard,  and  a 
part  of  Cape  Cod ;  of  the  Narragansetts,  who  dwelt  be- 
tween the  bay  that  bears  their  name  and  the  present  limits 
of  Connecticut,  holding  dominion  over  Rhode  Island  and 
its  vicinity,  as  well  as  a  part  of  Long  Island,  —  the  most 
civilized  of  the  northern  nations ;  of  the  Pequods,  the 
branch  of  the  Mohegans  that  occupied  the  eastern  part  of 
Connecticut,  and  ruled  a  part  of  Long  Island,  —  earliest 
victims  to  the  Europeans,  —  I  have  already  related  the 
overthrow.  .  The  country  between  the  banks  of  the  Con- 
necticut and  the  Hudson  was  possessed  by  independent 
villages  of  the  Mohegans,  kindred  with  the  Manhattans, 
whose  few  "  smokes  "  once  rose  amidst  the  forests  on  Kew 
York  Island. 

The  Lenni-Lenape,  in  their  two  divisions  of  the  Minsi 
and  the  Delawares,  occupied  New  Jersey,  the  valley  of  the 
Delaware  far  up  towards  the  sources  of  that  river,  and  the 
entire  basin  of  the  Schuylkill.  Like  the  benevolent  William 
Penn,  the  Delawares  were  pledged  to  a  system  of  peace ; 
but,  while  Penn  forbore  retaliation  voluntarily,  the  passive- 
ness  of  the  Delawares  was  the  degrading  confession  of  their 
defeat  and  submission  to  the  Five  Nations.  Their  conquer- 
ors had  stripped  them  of  their  rights  as  warriors,  and  com- 
pelled them  to  endure  taunts  as  women. 

Beyond  the  Delaware,  on  the  eastern  shore,  dwelt  the 
Nanticokes,  who  disappeared  without  glory,  or  melted 
imperceptibly  into  other  tribes ;  and  the  names  of  Accomack 
and  Pamlico  are  the  chief  memorials  of  tribes  that  made 
dialects  of  the  Algonkin  the  mother  tongue  of  the  natives 
along  the  sea-coast  as  far  south,  at  least,  as  Cape  Hatteras. 
It  is  probable,  also,  that  the  Corees,  or  Coramines,  who 
dwelt  to  the  southward  of  the  Neuse  River,  spoke  a  kin-" 
dred  language;  thus  establishing  Cape  Fear  as  the  southern'^ 
limit  of  the  Algonkin  speech. 

In  Vu-ginia,   the  same   language  was  heard  throughout' 


Chap.  XXXVI.    INDIANS  EAST  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI.        397 

the  whole  dominion  of  Powhatan,  which  had  the  tribes  of 
the  eastern  shore  as  its  dependencies,  and  included  all  the 
villages  west  of  the  Chesapeake,  from  the  most  southern 
tributaries  of  James  River  to  the  Patuxent.  The  power  of 
the  little  empire  was  entirely  broken  in  the  days  of  Opechan- 
canough  ;  and,  after  the  insurrection  of  Bacon,  the  confed- 
eracy disappears  from  history. 

The  Shawnees  connect  the  south-eastern  Algonkins  with 
the  west.  The  basin  of  the  Cumberland  River  is  marked 
by  the  earliest  French  geographers  as  the  home  of  this  rest- 
less nation  of  wanderers.  A  part  of  them  afterwards  had 
their  "  cabins "  and  their  "  springs "  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Winchester.  Their  principal  band  removed  from  their 
hunting-fields  in  Kentucky  to  the  head-waters  of  one  of  the 
great  rivers  of  South  Carolina;  and,  at  a  later  day,  an 
encampment  of  four  hundred  and  fifty  of  them,  who  had 
been  straggling  in  the  woods  for  four  years,  was  found  not 
far  north  of  the  head-waters  of  the  Mobile  River,  on  their 
way  to  the  country  of  the  Muskohgees.  It  was  about  the 
year  1698  that  three  or  four  score  of  their  families,  with  the 
consent  of  the  government  of  Pennsylvania,  removed  from 
Carolina,  and  pla'nted  themselves  on  the  Susquehannah. 
Sad  were  the  fruits  of  that  hospitality.  Others  followed ; 
and  when,  in  1732,  the  number  of  Indian  fighting  men  in 
Pennsylvania  was  estimated  to  be  seven  hundred,  one  half 
of  them  were  Shawnee  emigrants.  So  desolate  was  the 
wilderness,  that  a  vagabond  tribe  could  wander  undisturbed 
from  Cumberland  River  to  the  Alabama,  from  the  head- 
waters of  the  Santee  to  the  Susquehannah. 

The  Miamis  were  more  stable,  and  their  own  traditions 
preserve  the  memory  of  their  ancient  limits.  "  My  fore- 
father," said  the  Miami  orator  Little  Turtle,  at  Greenville, 
"  kindled  the  first  fire  at  Detroit ;  from  thence  he  extended 
his  lines  to  the  head-waters  of  Scioto  ;  from  thence  to  its 
mouth ;  from  thence  down  the  Ohio  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Wabash ;  and  from  thence  to  Chicago,  on  Lake  Michigan. 
These  are  the  boundaries  within  which  the  prints  of  my 
ancestor's  houses  are  everywhere  to  be  seen."  And  the 
early   French  narratives  confirm   his  words.      The  forests 


398  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVL 

beyond  Detroit  were  at  first  found  unoccupied,  or,  it  may 
be,  roamed  over  by  bands  too  feeble  to  attract  a  trader  or 
win  a  missionary;  the  Ottawas,  Algonkin  fugitives  from 
the  basin  of  the  magnificent  river  whose  name  commemo- 
rates them,  fled  to  the  Bay  of  Saginaw,  and  took  possession 
of  the  whole  north  of  the  peninsula  as  of  a  derelict  country ; 
yet  the  Miamis  occupied  its  southern  moiety,  and  their 
principal  mission  was  founded  by  Allotiez  on  the  banks  of 
the  St.  Joseph,  within  the  present  state  of  Michigan. 

The  Illinois  were  kindred  to  the  Miamis,  and  their  coun- 
try lay  between  the  Wabash,  the  Ohio,  and  the  Mississippi. 
Marquette  found  a  village  of  them  on  the  Des  Moines,  but 
its  occupants  soon  withdrew  to  the  east  of  the  Mississippi ; 
and  Kaskaskia,  Cahokia,  Peoria,  still  preserve  the  names  of 
the  pi-incipal  bands,  of  which  the  original  strength  has  been 
greatly  exaggerated.  The  vague  tales  of  a  considerable 
population  vanished  before  the  accurate  observation  of  the 
missionaries,  who  found  in  the  wide  wilderness  of  Illinois 
scarcely  three  or  four  villages.  On  the  discovery  of  Amer- 
ica, the  number  of  the  scattered  tenants  of  the  territory 
which  now  forms  the  states  of  Ohio  and  Michigan,  of  Indi- 
ana, and  Illinois,  and  Kentucky,  could  hardly  have  exceeded 
eighteen  thousand. 

In  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  Potta- 
watomies  had  crowded  the  Miamis  from  their  dwellings 
at  Chicago  :  the  intruders  came  from  the  islands  near  the 
entrance  of  Green  Bay,  and  were  a  branch  of  the  great  na- 
tion of  the  Chippewas.  That  nation,  or,  as  some  write,  the 
O  jib  ways,  —  the  Algonkin  tribe  of  whose  dialect,  mythol- 
ogy, traditions,  and  customs,  we  have  the  fullest  accounts, 
—  held  the  country  from  the  mouth  of  Green  Bay  to  the 
head-waters  of  Lake  Superior,  and  were  early  visited  by 
the  French  at  Sault  St.  Mary  and  Chegoimegon.  They 
adopted  into  their  tribes  many  of  the  Ottawas  from  Upper 
Canada,  and  were  themselves  often  included  by  the  early 
French  writers  under  that  name. 

Ottawa  is  but  the  Algonkin  word  for  "  trader ; "  and  Mas- 
coutins  are  but  "  dwellers  in  the  prairie."  The  latter  hardly 
implies  a  band  of  Indians  distinct  from  other  nations  ;  bu)r 


Chap.  XXXVI.     INDIANS  EAST  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI.        399 

history  recognises,  as  a  separate  Algonkin  tribe  near  Green 
Bay,  the  Menoraonies,  who  were  found  there  in  1669,  who 
retained  their  ancient  territory  long  after  the  period  of 
French  and  of  English  supremacy,  and  who  prove  their 
high  antiquity  as  a  nation  by  the  singular  character  of  their 
dialect. 

South-west  of  the  Menomonies,  the  restless  Sacs  and 
Foxes,  ever  dreaded  by  the  French,  held  the  passes  from 
Green  Bay  and  Fox  River  to  the  Mississippi,  and  with  in- 
satiate avidity  roamed  defiantly  over  the  whole  country 
between  the  Wisconsin  and  the  upper  branches  of  the  Illi- 
nois. The  Shawnees  are  said  to  have  an  affinity  with  this 
nation ;  that  the  Kickapoos,  who  established  themselves  by 
conquest  in  the  north  of  Illinois,  are  but  a  branch  of  it,  is 
demonstrated  by  their  speech. 

So  numerous  and  so  widely  extended  were  the  tribes  of 
the  Algonkin  family.  They  were  scattered  over  a  moiety, 
or  perhaps  more  than  a  moiety,  of  the  territory  east  of  the 
Mississippi  and  south  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  constituted 
about  one  half  of  the  original  population  of  that  territory. 

II.  North-west  of  the  Sacs  and  Foxes,  west  of  the  Chip- 
pewas,  bands  of  the  Sioux,  or  Dakotas,  had  encamped  on 
prairies  east  of  the  Mississippi,  vagrants  between  the  head- 
waters of  Lake  Superior  and  the  Falls  of  St.  Anthony. 
They  were  a  branch  of  the  great  family  which,  dwelling 
for  the  most  part  west  of  the  Mississippi  and  the  Red 
River,  extended  from  the  Saskatchawan  to  lands  south  of 
the  Arkansas.  French  traders  discovered  their  wigwams 
in  1659 ;  Hennepin  was  among  them,  on  his  expedition  to 
the  north ;  Joseph  Marest  and  another  Jesuit  visited  them 
in  1687,  and  again  in  1689.  There  seemed  to  exist  a  hered- 
itary warfare  between  them  and  the  Chippewas.  Their 
relations  to  the  colonists,  whether  of  France  or  England, 
were,  at  this  early  period,  accidental,  and  related  chiefly 
to  individuals.  But  one  little  community  of  the  Dakota 
family  had  penetrated  the  territory  of  the  Algonquins :  the 
Winnebagoes,  dwelling  between  Green  Bay  and  the  lake 
that  bears  their  name,  preferred  rather  to  be  environed 
by  Algonkins   than   to    stay  in  the   dangerous   vicinity  of 


400  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVL 

their  own  kindred.    Like  other  western  and  southern  tribes, 
their  population  appears  of  late  to  have  greatly  increased. 

III.  The  nations  which  spoke  dialects  of  the  Hueon- 
Ieoqtjois,  or,  as  it  has  also  been  called,  of  the  Wyandot, 
were,  on  the  discovery  of  America,  found  powerful  in 
numbers,  and  diffused  over  a  wide  territory.  The  penin- 
sular enclosed  between  Lakes  Huron,  Erie,  and  Ontario, 
had  been  the  dwelling-place  of  the  five  confederated  tribes 
of  the  Hurons.  After  their  defeat  by  the  Five  Nations,  a 
part  descended  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  their  progeny  may 
still  be  seen  near  Quebec  ;  a  part  were  adopted,  on  equal 
terms,  into  the  tribes  of  their  conquerors;  the  Wyandots 
fled  beyond  Lake  Superior,  and  hid  themselves  in  the 
dreary  wastes  that  divided  the  Chippewas  from  their  west- 
ern foes.  In  1671,  they  retreated  before  the  powerful 
Sioux,  and  made  their  home  first  at  St.  Mary's  and  at 
Michilimackinac,  and  afterwards  near  the  post  of  Detroit. 
Thus  the  Wyandots  within  our  borders  were  emigrants 
from  Canada.  Having  a  mysterious  influence  over  the 
Algonkin  tribes,  and  making  treaties  with  the  Five  Na- 
tions, they  spread  along  Lake  Erie ;  and,  leaving  to  the 
Miamis  the  country  beyond  the  Miami  of  the  lakes,  they 
gradually  acquired  a  claim  to  the  territory  from  that  river 
to  the  western  boundary  of  New  York. 

The  immediate  dominion  of  the  Iroquois  —  where  the 
Mohawks,  Oneidas,  Onondagas,  Cayugas,  and  Senecas, 
were  first  visited  by  the  trader,  the  missionary,  or  the  war- 
parties  of  the  French  —  stretched,  as  we  have  seen,  from 
the  borders  of  Vermont  to  Western  New  York,  from  the 
lakes  to  the  head-waters  of  the  Ohio,  the  Susquehannah, 
and  the  Delaware.  The  number  of  their  warriors  was 
declared  by  the  French,  in  1660,  to  have  been  two  thou- 
sand two  hundred ;  and,  in  1677,  an  English  agent,  sent  on 
purpose  to  ascertain  their  strength,  confirmed  the  pre- 
cision of  the  statement.  Their  geographical  position  made 
them  umpires  in  the  contest  of  the  French  for  dominion  in 
the  west.  Besides,  their  political  importance  was  increased  \ 
by  their  conquests.  Not  only  did  they  claim  some  suprem- 
acy in  Northern  New  England  as  far  as  the  Kennebec, 


1 


Chap.  XXXVI.    INDIANS  EAST  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI.        401 

and  to  the  south  as  far  as  New  Haven,  and  were  acknowl- 
edged as  absolute  lords  over  the  conquered  Lenape,  —  the 
peninsula  of  Upper  Canada  was  their  hunting-field  by 
right  of  war ;  they  had  exterminated  or  reduced  the  Eries 
and  the  Conestogas,  both  tribes  of  their  own  family,  the 
one  dwelling  to  the  south  of  Lake  Erie,  the  other  on  the 
banks  of  the  Susquehannah ;  they  had  triumphantly  in- 
vaded the  tribes  of  the  west  as  far  as  Illinois  ;  their  warriors 
had  reached  the  soil  of  Kentucky  and  Western  Virginia ; 
and  England,  to  whose  alliance  they  steadily  inclined, 
availed  itself  of  their  treaties  for  the  cession  of  territories, 
to  encroach  even  on  the  empire  of  France  in  America. 

But  the  labors  of  the  Jesuit  missionaries  had  not  been 
fruitless.  The  few  families  of  the  Iroquois  who  migrated 
to  the  north  of  Lake  Ontario,  and  raised  their  huts  round 
Fort  Frontenac,  remained  in  amity  with  the  French ;  and 
two  villages  of  Iroquois  converts,  the  Cahnewagas  of  New 
England  writers,  were  established  near  Montreal,  a  barrier 
against  their  heathen  countrymen  and  against  New  York. 

The  Huron  tribes  of  the  north  were  environed  by  Al- 
gonkins.  At  the  south,  the  Chowan,  the  Meherrin,  the 
Nottoway,  villages  of  tlpe  Wyandot  family,  have  left  their 
names  to  the  rivers  along  which  they  dwelt ;  and  the 
Tuscaroras,  kindred  with  the  Five  Nations,  were  the  most 
powerful  tribe  in  North  Carolina.  In  1708,  its  fifteen 
towns  still  occupied  the  upper  country  on  the  Neuse  and 
the  Tar. 

TV.  South  of  the  Tuscaroras,  the  midlands  of  Carolina 
sheltered  the  Catawbas.  Its  villages  included  the  Woe- 
cons,  and  the  nation  spoke  a  language  of  its  own  :  that 
language  is  now  almost  extinct,  being  known  only  to  less 
than  one  hundred  persons,  who  linger  on  the  banks  of  a 
branch  of  the  Santee.  Imagination  never  assigned  to  the 
Catawbas,  in  their  proudest  days,  more  than  twelve  hun- 
dred and  fifty  warriors ;  the  oldest  enumeration  was  made 
in  1743,  and  gives  but  four  hundred.  It  may  therefore 
be  inferred  that,  on  the  first  appearance  of  Europeans, 
their  language  was  in  the  keeping  of  not  more  than  three 
thousand  souls.  History  knows  them  chiefly  as  the  hered- 
voL.  II.  26 


402  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVL 

itary  foes  of   the    Iroquois   tribes,   before    whose    prowess 
and  numbers  they  dwindled  away. 

V.  The  mountaineers  of  aboriginal  America  were  the 
Cherokee s,  who  occupied  the  upper  valley  of  the  Tennes- 
see River  as  far  west  as  Muscle  Shoals,  and  the  highlands 
of  Carolina,  Georgia,  and  Alabama,  —  the  most  picturesque 
and  most  salubrious  region  east  of  the  Mississippi.  Their 
homes  were  encircled  by  blue  hills  rising  beyond  hills,  of 
which  the  lofty  peaks  would  kindle  with  the  early  light, 
and  the  overshadowing  ridges  envelop  the  valleys  like  a 
mass  of  clouds.  There  the  rocky  cliffs,  rising  in  naked 
grandeur,  defy  the  lightning,  and  mock  the  loudest  peals 
of  the  thunder-storm ;  there  the  gentler  slopes  are  covered 
with  magnolias  and  flowering  forest  trees,  decorated  with 
roving  climbers,  and  ring  with  the  perpetual  note  of  the 
whip-poor-will ;  there  the  wholesome  water  gushes  profusely 
from  the  earth  in  transparent  springs  ;  snow-white  cascades 
glitter  on  the  hillsides ;  and  the  rivers,  shallow  but  pleas- 
ant to  the  eye,  rush  through  the  narrow  vales,  which  the 
abundant  strawberry  crimsons,  and  coppices  of  rhododen- 
dron and  flaming  azalea  adorn.  At  the  fall  of  the  leaf, 
the  fruit  of  the  hickory  and  the  chestnut  is  thickly  strown 
on  the  ground.  The  fertile  soil  teems  with  luxuriant  herb- 
age, on  which  the  roebuck  fattens;  the  vivifying  breeze 
is  laden  with  fragrance ;  and  daybreak  is  ever  welcomed 
by  the  shrill  cries  of  the  social  night-hawk  and-  the  liquid 
carols  of  the  mocking-bird.  Through  this  lovely  region 
were  scattered  the  villages  of  the  Cherokees,  nearly  fifty  in 
number,  each  consisting  of  but  a  few  cabins,  erected  where 
the  bend  in  the  mountain  stream  offered  at  once  a  defence  and 
a  strip  of  alluvial  soil  for  culture.  Their  towns  were  always 
by  the  side  of  some  creek  or  river,  and  they  loved  their 
native  land;  above  all,  they  loved  its  rivers,  the  Keowee, 
the  Tugeloo,  the  Flint,  and  the  beautiful  branches  of  the 
Tennessee.  Running  waters,  inviting  to  the  bath,  tempting 
the  angler,  alluring  wild  fowl,  were  necessary  to  their 
paradise.  Their  language,  like  that  of  the  Iroquois,  abounds 
in  vowels,  and  is  destitute  of  the  labials.  Its  organization 
has  a  common  character,  but  etymology  has  not  yet  been 


Chap.  XXXVI.    INDIANS  EAST  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI.        403 

able  to  discover  conclusive  analogies  between  the  roots 
of  words.  The  "  beloved "  people  of  the  Cherokees  were 
a  nation  by  themselves.  Who  can  say  for  how  many 
centuries,  safe  in  their  undiscovered  fastnesses,  they  had 
decked  their  war-chiefs  with  the  feathers  of  the  eagle's 
tail,  and  listened  to  the  counsels  of  their  "old  beloved 
men "  ?  Who  can  tell  how  often  the  waves  of  barbarous 
migrations  may  have  broken  harmlessly  against  their  cliffs, 
where  nature  was  the  strong  ally  of  the  defenders  of  their 
land? 

YI.  South-east  of  the  Cherokees  dwelt  the  IIchees. 
They  claimed  the  country  above  and  below  Augusta,  and, 
at  the  earliest  period  respecting  which  we  can  surmise, 
seem  not  to  have  extended  beyond  the  Chattahoochee ;  yet 
they  boast  to  have  been  the  oldest  inhabitants  of  that 
region.  They  now  constitute  an  inconsiderable  band  in  the 
Creek  confederacy,  and  are  known  as  a  distinct  family,  not 
from  political  organization,  but  from  their  singularly  harsh 
and  guttural  language.  When  first  discovered,  they  were 
but  a  remnant,  favoring  the  conjecture  that,  from  the  north 
and  west,  tribe  may  have  pressed  upon  tribe ;  that  succes- 
sions of  nations  may  have  been  exterminated  by  invading 
nations ;  that  even  languages,  which  are  the  least  perishable 
monument  of  the  savages,  may  have  become  extinct. 

VII.  The  Natchez,  also,  are  now  merged  in  the  same  con- 
federacy ;  but  they,  with  the  Taensas,  were  known  to  history 
as  a  distinct  nation,  residing  in  scarcely  more  than  four  or 
five  villages,  of  which  the  largest  rose  near  the  banks  of  the 
Mississippi.  That  they  spoke  but  a  dialect  of  the  Mobilian 
is  an  inference  which  the  memoirs  of  Dumont  would  have 
warranted,  and  which  more  recent  travellers  have  confirmed 
without  reservation ;  while  the  diffuse  Du  Pratz  represents 
them  as  using  at  once  the  Mobilian  and  a  radically  different 
speech  of  their  own.  The  missionary  station  among  them 
was  assigned  to  Franciscans;  and  the  Jesuits  who  have 
written  of  them  are  silent  respecting  the  tongue,  which 
they  themselves  had  no  occasion  to  employ.  The  opinion 
of  the  acute  Vater  was  in  favor  of  its  original  character ; 
and,  by  the  persevering  curiosity  of  Gallatin,  it  is  at  last 


404  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVL 

known  that  the  Natchez  were  distinguished  from  the  tribes 
around  them  less  by  their  customs  and  the  degree  of  their 
civilization  than  by  their  language,  which,  as  far  as  com- 
parisons have  been  instituted,  has  no  etymological  affinity 
with  any  other  whatever.  Here,  again,  the  imagination  too 
readily  kindles  to  invent  theories;  and  the  tradition  has 
been  widely  received  that  the  dominion  of  the  Natchez 
once  extended  even  to  the  Wabash  ;  that  they  are  emigrants 
from  Mexico ;  that  they  are  the  kindred  of  the  Incas  of 
Peru.  The  close  observation  of  the  state  of  the  arts  among 
them  tends  to  dispel  these  illusions;  and  history  knows 
them  only  as  a  feeble  and  inconsiderable  nation,  the  occu- 
pants of  a  narrow  territory  round  the  spot,  where  the  Chris- 
tian church  and  the  dwellings  of  emigrants  from  Europe 
and  from  Africa  have  displaced  the  rude  abode  of  their 
Great  Sun  and  the  artless  cabin  of  the  guardians  of  the 
sacred  fire,  which  they  vainly  hoped  should  never  die. 

VIII.  With  these  exceptions  of  the  Uchees  and  the 
Natchez,  the  whole  country  south-east,  south,  and  west  of 
the  Cherokees,  to  the  Atlantic  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  to 
the  Mississippi  and  the  confluence  of  the  Tennessee  and 
Ohio,  was  in  the  possession  of  one  great  family  of  nations, 
of  which  the  language  was  named  by  the  French  the  Mo- 
BiLiAN,  and  is  described  by  Gallatin  as  the  Muskohgee- 
Choctaw.  It  included  three  considerable  confederacies, 
each  of  which  still  exists,  and  perhaps  even  with  some  in- 
crease of  numbers. 

The  country  bounded  on  the  Ohio  at  the  north,  on  the 
Mississippi  at  the  west,  on  the  east  by  a  line  drawn  from 
the  bend  in  the  Cumberland  River  to  the  Muscle  Shoals  of 
the  Tennessee,  and  extending  at  the  south  into  the  territory 
of  the  state  of  Mississippi,  was  the  land  of  the  cheerful, 
brave  Chickasaws,  the  faithful,  the  invincible  allies  of  the 
English.  Marquette  found  them  already  in  possession  of 
guns,  obtained  probably  through  Virginia;  La  Salle  built 
Fort  Prudhomme  on  one  of  their  bluffs  ;  but  their  chosen 
abodes  were  on  the  upland  country,  which  gives  birth  to 
the  Yazoo  and  the  Tombigbee,  the  finest  and  most  fruitful 
on  the  continent,  —  where  the   grass   is  verdant   in   mid- 


Chap.  XXXVI.    INDIANS  EAST  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI.        405 

winter,  the  blue-bird  and  the  robin  are  heard  in  February ; 
the  springs  of  pure  water  gurgle  up  through  the  white 
sands,  to  flow  through  natural  bowers  of  evergreen  holly ; 
and,  if  the  earth  be  but  carelessly  gashed  to  receive  the 
kernel  of  maize,  the  thick  corn  springs  abundantly  from  the 
fertile  soil.  The  region  is  as  happy  as  any  beneath  the  sun  ; 
and  the  love  which  it  inspired  made  its  occupants,  though 
not  numerous,  yet  the  most  intrepid  warriors  of  the  south. 

Below  the  Chickasaws,  between  the  Mississippi  and  the 
Tombigbee,  was  the  land  of  the  Choctaws,  who  were  gath- 
ered on  the  eastern  frontier  into  compact  villages,  but 
elsewhere  were  scattered  through  the  interior  of  their  ter- 
ritory. Dwelling  in  plains  or  among  gentle  hills,  they  ex- 
celled every  North  American  tribe  in  their  agriculture, 
subsisting  chiefly  on  corn,  and  placing  little  dependence 
on  the  chase.  Their  country  was  healthful,  abounding  in 
brooks.  The  number  of  their  warriors  perhaps  exceeded 
four  thousand.  Their  dialect  of  the  Mobilian  so  nearly 
resembles  that  of  the  Chickasaws,  that  they  almost  seemed 
but  one  nation.  The  Choctaws  were  allies  of  the  French, 
yet  preserving  their  indei)endence :  their  love  for  their 
country  was  intense,  and,  in  defending  it,  they  utterly  con- 
temned danger. 

The  ridge  that  divided  the  Tombigbee  from  the  Alabama 
was  the  line  that  separated  the  Choctaws  from  the  groups 
of  tribes  which  were  soon  united  in  the  confederacy  of  the 
Creeks  or  Muskohgees.  Their  territory,  including  all  Flor- 
ida, reached,  on  the  north,  to  the  Cherokees ;  on  the  north- 
east and  east,  to  the  country  on  the  Savannah  and  to  the 
Atlantic.  Along  the  sea,  their  northern  limit  seems  to  have 
extended  almost  to  Cape  Fear;  at  least,  the  tribes  with 
which  the  settlers  at  Charleston  first  waged  war  are  enu- 
merated by  one  writer  as  branches  of  the  Muskohgees. 
Their  population,  spread  over  a  fourfold  wider  territory, 
did  not  exceed  that  of  the  Choctaws  in  number.  Their 
towns  were  situated  on  the  banks  of  beautiful  creeks,  in 
which  their  country  abounded ;  the  waters  of  their  bold 
rivers,  from  the  Coosa  to  the  Chattahoochee,  descended 
rapidly,  with  a  clear  current,  through  healthful  and  fertile 


406  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVI. 

regions ;  they  were  careful  in  their  agriculture,  and,  before 
going  to  war,  assisted  their  women  to  plant.  In  Florida, 
they  welcomed  the  Spanish  missionaries ;  and,  throughout 
their  country,  they  derived  so  much  benefit  from  the  arts 
of  civilization  that  their  numbers  soon  promised  to  increase ; 
and,  being  placed  between  the  English  of  Carolina,  the 
French  of  Louisiana,  the  Spaniards  of  Florida,  —  bordering 
on  the  Choctaws,  the  Chickasaws,  and  the  Cherokees, — 
their  political  importance  made  them  esteemed  as  the  most 
powerful  Indian  nation  north  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  They 
readily  gave  shelter  to  fugitives  from  other  tribes ;  and 
their  speech  became  so  modified  that,  with  radical  resem- 
blances, it  has  the  widest  departure  from  its  kindred  dia- 
lects. The  Yamassees,  on  the  Savannah,  seem  certainly  to 
have  been  one  of  their  bands ;  and  the  Serainoles  of  Florida 
are  but  "  wild  men,"  lost  from  their  confederacy,  and  aban- 
doning agriculture  for  the  chase. 

Such  is  a  synopsis  of  the  American  nations  east  of  the 
Mississippi.  It  is  not  easy  to  estimate  their  probable  num- 
bers at  the  period  of  their  discovery.  Many  of  them  —  the 
Narragansetts,  the  Illinois  —  boasted  of  the  superior  strength 
of  their  former  condition  ;  and,  from  wonder,  from  fear,  from 
the  ambition  of  exciting  surprise,  early  travellers  often  re- 
peated the  exaggerations  of  savage  vanity.  The  Hurons  of 
Upper  Canada  were  thought  to  number  many  more  than 
thirty  thousand,  perhaps  even  fifty  thousand,  souls ;  yet, 
according  to  the  more  exact  enumeration  of  1639,  they 
could  not  have  exceeded  ten  thousand.  In  the  heart  of  a 
wilderness,  a  few  cabins  seemed  like  a  city ;  and  to  the  pil- 
grim, who  had  walked  for  weeks  without  meeting  a  human 
being,  a  territory  would  appear  densely  peopled  where,  in 
every  few  days,  a  wigwam  could  be  encountered.  Vermont 
and  North-western  Massachusetts  and  much  of  New  Hamp- 
shire were  solitudes  ;  Ohio,  a  part  of  Indiana,  the  largest 
part  of  Michigan,  remained  open  to  Indian  emigration  long 
after  America  began  to  be  colonized  by  Europeans.  From 
the  portage  between  the  Fox  and  the  Wisconsin  to  the  Des 
Moines,  Marquette  saw  neither  the  countenance  nor  the 
footstep  of  man.     In  Illinois,  so  friendly  to  the  habits  of 


Chap.  XXXVI.    INDIANS  EAST  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI.        407 

8avage  life,  the  Franciscan  Zenobe  Mambre,  whose  journal 
is  preserved  by  Le  Clercq,  describes  the  "  only  large  vil- 
lage "  as  containing  seven  or  eight  thousand  souls ;  Father 
Rasles  imagined  he  had  seen  in  one  place  twelve  hundred 
fires,  kindled  for  more  than  two  thousand  families  :  other 
missionaries  who  made  their  abode  there  describe  their 
appalling  journeys  through  absolute  solitudes  ;  they  repre- 
sent their  vocation  as  a  chase  after  a  savage,  that  was  scarce 
ever  to  be  found  ;  and  they  could  establish  hardly  five,  or 
even  three,  villages  in  the  whole  region.  Kentucky,  after 
the  expulsion  of  the  Shawnees,  remained  the  park  of  the 
Cherokees.  The  banished  tribe  easily  fled  up  the  valley  of 
the  Cumberland  River,  to  find  a  vacant  wilderness  in  the 
highlands  of  Carolina  ;  and  a  part  of  them  for  years  roved 
to  and  fro  in  wildernesses  west  of  the  Cherokees.  On  early 
maps,  the  low  country  from  the  Mobile  to  Florida  is  marked 
as  vacant.  The  oldest  reports  from  Georgia  exult  in  the 
entire  absence  of  Indians  from  the  vicinity  of  Savannah, 
and  will  not  admit  that  there  were  more  than  a  few  within 
four  hundred  miles.  There  are  hearsay  and  vague  accounts 
of  Indian  war-parties  composed  of  many  hundreds  :  those 
who  wrote  from  knowledge  furnish  the  means  of  compar- 
ison and  correction.  The  population  of  the  Five  ^Nations 
could  not  have  varied  much  from  ten  thousand  ;  and  their 
warriors  strolled  as  conquerors  from  Hudson's  Bay  to  Caro- 
lina, from  the  Kennebec  to  the  Tennessee.  Very  great 
uncertainty  must  indeed  attend  any  estimate  of  the  origi- 
nal number  of  Indians  east  of  the  Mississippi  and  south  of 
the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  chain  of  lakes.  The  diminution 
of  their  population  is  far  less  than  is  usually  supposed  :  they 
have  been  exiled,  but  not  exterminated.  The  use  of  iron, 
of  gunpowder,  of  the  horse,  has  given  to  the  savage  domin- 
ion over  the  beasts  of  the  forest,  and  new  power  over  nature. 
The  Cherokee  and  Mobilian  families  of  nations  are  more 
numerous  now  than  ever.  We  shall  approach,  and  perhaps 
exceed,  a  just  estimate  of  their  numbers  two  hundred  years 
ago,  if  to  the  various  tribes  of  the  Algonkin  race  we  allow 
about  ninety  thousand  ;  of  the  eastern  Sioux  less  than  three 
thousand ;  of  the  Iroquois,  including   their   southern   kin- 


408  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVL 

dred,  about  seventeen  thousand ;  of  the  Catawbas,  three 
thousand ;  of  the  Cherokees,  twelve  thousand ;  of  the  Mo- 
bilian  confederacies  and  tribes,  —  that  is,  of  the  Chicka- 
saws,  Choctaws,  and  Muskohgees,  —  fifty  thousand;  of  the 
lichees,  one  thousand ;  of  the  Natchez,  four  thousand :  in 
all,  it  may  be,  not  far  from  one  hundred  and  eighty  thousand 
souls. 

The  study  of  the  structure  of  the  dialects  of  the  red  men 
sheds  light  on  the  inquiry  into  their  condition.  Language 
is  their  oldest  monument,  and  the  record  and  image  of  their 
experience.  No  savage  horde  has  been  caught  with  it  in  a 
state  of  chaos,  or  as  if  just  emerging  from  the  rudeness  of 
undistinguishable  sounds.  No  American  language  bears 
marks  of  being  an  arbitrary  aggregation  of  separate  parts ; 
but  each  is  possessed  of  an  organization,  having  unity  of 
character,  and  controlled  by  exact  rules.  Each  appears  not 
as  a  slow  formation  by  painful  processes  of  invention,  but 
as  a  perfect  whole,  springing  directly  from  the  powers  of 
man.  A  savage  physiognomy  is  imprinted  on  the  dialect 
of  the  dweller  in  the  wilderness  ;  but  each  dialect  is  still  not 
only  free  from  confusion,  but  is  almost  absolutely  free  from 
irregularities,  and  is  pervaded  and  governed  by  undeviating 
laws.  As  the  bee  builds  his  cells  regularly,  yet  without  the 
recognition  of  the  rules  of  geometry,  so  the  unreflecting  sav- 
age, in  the  use  of  words,  had  rule  and  method.  His  speech, 
like  every  thing  else,  underwent  change ;  but  human  pride 
errs  in  believing  that  the  art  of  cultivated  man  was  needed 
to  resolve  it  into  its  elements,  and  give  to  it  new  forms, 
before  it  could  fulfil  its  office.  Each  American  language 
was  competent,  of  itself,  without  improvement  from  schol- 
ars, to  exemplify  every  rule  of  the  logician,  and  give  utter- 
ance to  every  passion.  Each  dialect  that  has  been  analyzed 
has  been  found  rich  in  derivatives  and  compounds,  in  com- 
binations and  forms.  As  certain  as  every  plant  which  draws 
juices  from  the  earth  has  roots  and  sap-vessels,  bark  and 
leaves,  so  certainly  each  language  has  its  complete  organiza- 
tion ;  including  the  same  parts  of  speech,  though  some  of 
them  may  lie  concealed  in  mutual  coalitions.  Human  con- 
sciousness and  human  speech  exist  everywhere,  indissolubly 


Chap.  XXXVI.     INDIANS  EAST  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI.        409 

united.  A  tribe  has  no  more  been  found  without  an  organ- 
ized language  than  without  eyesight  or  memory. 

The  American  savage  has  tongue  and  palate  and  lips  and 
throat;  the  power  to  utter  flowing  sounds,  the  power  to  hiss : 
hence  the  primitive  sounds  are  essentially  the  same.  The 
savage  had,  indeed,  never  attempted  their  analysis  ;  but  the 
analogies  are  so  close  that  they  may  almost  all  be  expressed 
by  the  alphabet  of  European  use.  The  tribes  vary  in  their 
capacity  or  their  custom  of  expressing  sounds ;  the  Oneidas 
always  changed  the  letter  r ;  the  rest  of  the  Iroquois  tribes 
rejected  the  letter  I.  The  Algonkins  have  no/*/  the  whole 
Iroquois  family  never  use  the  semivowel  m,  and  want  the 
labials  entirely.  The  Cherokees,  employing  the  semivowels, 
are  in  like  manner  destitute  of  the  labials.  Of  the  several 
dialects  of  the  Iroquois,  that  of  the  Oneidas  is  the  most 
soft,  being  the  only  one  that  admits  the  letter  I ;  that  of  the 
Senecas  is  rudest  and  most  energetic.  The  Algonkin  dia- 
lects, especially  those  of  the  Abenakis,  heap  up  consonants 
with  prodigal  harshness ;  the  Iroquois  abound  in  a  concur- 
rence of  vowels ;  in  the  Cherokee,  every  syllable  ends  with 
a  vowel,  and  the  combinations  with  consonants  are  so  few 
and  so  simple  that  the  "  old  beloved  speech,"  like  the  Japa- 
nese, admits  a  syllabic  alphabet,  of  which  the  signs  need  not 
exceed  eighty-five. 

Quickened  by  conversation  with  Europeans,  Sequoah,  an 
ingenious  Cherokee,  recently  completed  an  analysis  of  the 
syllables  of  his  language,  and  invented  symbols  to  express 
them.  But,  before  acquaintance  with  Europeans,  no  red  man 
had  discriminated  the  sounds  which  he  articulated :  in  all 
America,  there  was  no  alphabet ;  and,  to  the  eye,  knowledge 
was  conveyed  only  by  rpde  imitations.  In  a  picture  of  an 
animal  drawn  on  a  sheet  of  birch  bark,  or  on  a  smooth  stone, 
or  on  a  blazed  tree,  an  Indian  will  recognise  the  symbol  of 
his  tribe ;  and  the  figures  that  are  sketched  around  will  give 
him  a  message  from  his  friends.  Pictorial  hieroglyphics 
were  met  with  in  all  parts  of  America,  in  Southern  Louisi- 
ana, and  in  the  land  of  the  Wyandots,  among  Algonkins 
and  Mohawks.  The  rudest  painting,  giving  its  story  at  a 
glance,  constituted  the  only  writing  of  the  Indian. 


410  COLONIAL  HISTOKY.  Chap.  XXXVI. 

As  his  mode  of  writing  was  by  imitation  of  visible  objects, 
so  his  language  itself  was  held  in  bonds  by  the  external  world. 
Abounding  in  words  to  designate  every  object  of  experi- 
ence, it  had  none  to  express  a  spiritual  conception ;  mate- 
rialism reigned  in  it.  The  individuality  of  the  barbarian 
and  of  his  tribe  stamps  itself  upon  his  speech.  Nature 
creates  or  shapes  expressions  for  his  sensations  and  his 
desires,  and  his  vocabulary  was  always  copious  in  words  for 
objects  within  his  knowledge,  for  ideas  derived  from  the 
senses;  but  for  "spiritual  matters  "  it  was  poor  ;  it  had  no 
name  for  continence  or  justice,  for  gratitude  or  holiness. 
That  each  American  tongue  has  been  successfully  used  by 
Christian  missionaries  comes  not  from  an  original  store  of 
words  expressing  moral  truth,  but  from  the  reciprocal  plia- 
bility of  ideas  and  their  signs.  It  required,  said  Loskiel,  the 
labor  of  years  to  make  the  Delaware  dialect  capable  of 
expressing  abstract  thought ;  it  was  necessary  to  forge  a  new 
nomenclature  out  of  existing  terms  by  circumlocutions  and 
combinations  ;  and  it  was  the  glory  of  Eliot  that  his  benev- 
olent simplicity  intuitively  caught  the  analogies  by  which 
moral  truth  could  be  conveyed  to  nations  whose  power  of 
expression  had  not  yet  emancipated  itself  from  material 
objects. 

In  another  point  of  view,  this  materialism  contributed 
greatly  to  the  picturesque  brilliancy  of  American  discourse. 
Prosperity  is  as  a  bright  sun  or  a  cloudless  sky  ;  to  establish 
peace  is  to  plant  a  forest  tree  or  to  bury  the  tomahawk  ;  to 
offer  presents  as  a  consolation  to  mourners  is  to  cover  the 
grave  of  the  departed  ;  and,  if  the  Indian  from  the  prairies 
would  speak  of  griefs  and  hardships,  it  is  the  thorns  of  the 
prickly  pear  that  penetrate  his  moqcasons.  Especially  the 
style  of  the  Six  Nations  was  adorned  with  noble  metaphors, 
and  glowed  with  allegory. 

If  we  search  for  the  distinguishing  traits  of  our  American 
languages,  we  shall  find  the  synthetic  character  pervading 
them  all,  and  establishing  their  rules.  The  American  does 
not  separate  the  component  parts  of  the  proposition  which 
he  utters;  he  never  analyzes  his  expressions;  his  thoughts 
rush  forth  in  a  troop.     The  picture  is  presented  at  once 


Chap.  XXXVI.    INDIANS  EAST  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI.        411 

and  all  together.  His  speech  is  as  a  kindling  cloud,  not  as 
radiant  points  of  light.  This  absence  of  all  reflective  con- 
sciousness, and  of  all  logical  analysis  of  ideas,  is  the  great 
peculiarity  of  American  speech.  Every  complex  idea  is 
expressed  in  a  group.  Synthesis  governs  every  form ;  it  per- 
vades all  the  dialects  of  the  Iroquois  and  the  Algonkin, 
and  equally  stamps  the  character  of  the  language  of  the 
Cherokee. 

This  synthetic  character  is  apparent  in  the  attempt  to 
express,  in  the  simplest  manner,  the  name  of  any  thing. 
The  Algonkin,  the  Iroquois,  did  not  ^d^y  father  ;  they  made 
use  of  a  more  definite  expression.  Their  nouns  implying 
relation,  says  Brebeuf,  always  include  the  signification  of 
one  of  the  three  persons  of  the  possessive  pronoun.  They 
do  not  say/a^Aer,  son,  master,  separately ;  the  noun  is  limited 
by  including  within  itself  the  pronoun  for  the  person  to 
whom  it  relates.  The  missionaries,  therefore,  did  not  know 
how  to  translate  the  doxology  literally,  but  chanted  among 
the  Hurons,  and  doubtless  at  Onondaga :  "  Glory  be  to  our 
Father,  and  to  his  Son,  and  to  their  Holy  Ghost." 

Just  so  the  savage  did  not  say  tree  or  house  j  the  word 
was  always  accompanied  by  prefixes  defining  its  application, 
though  "  there  is  something  of  our  prejudice,"  says  Whitney, 
in  describing  them  as  "  deficient  in  the  power  of  abstrac- 
tion." The  only  pronoun  which  can,  with  any  plausibility, 
be  called  an  article,  is  always  blended  with  the  noun. 

In  like  manner,  the  languages  are  defective  in  terms  that 
express  generalizations.  Our  forests  abound,  for  example, 
in  various  kinds  of  oak :  the  Algonkins  have  special  terms 
for  each  kind  of  oak,  but  no  generic  term  including  them 
all.  The  same  is  even  true  of  the  verb.  No  activity  is 
generalized  ;  and  hence  come  multitudes  of  words  to  express 
the  same  action,  as  modified  by  changes  of  its  object.  So, 
too,  they  have  no  noun  expressing  the  abstract  idea  of 
being ;  the  idea  is  always  blended  with  locality.  Not  one 
of  the  families  of  languages  of  which  we  treat  possessed 
the  simple  substantive  verb.  As  the  idea  of  being,  when 
expressed  by  a  noun,  was  always  blended  with  that  of  place, 
so  the  verb  to  be  was  never  used  abstractly,  but  included 


412  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVL 

within  itself  the  idea  of  place  and  time.  Thus  arises  a 
marvellous  fertility  of  expression,  and  a  wonderful  precision  ; 
and  yet  this  very  copiousness  is  a  defect,  springing  from 
the  want  of  reflection  and  analysis. 

The  same  synthetic  character  appears  in  the  formation  of 
words.  The  noun  receives  into  itself  not  only  the  affixed 
forms  designating  relation,  but  those  also  which  express  a 
quality.  The  noun  and  the  adjective  are,  with  the  pro- 
noun, blended  into  one  word.  The  power  of  combination, 
common  to  every  original  language,  is  possessed  in  an  un- 
limited degree ;  and,  as  a  new  object  is  presented  to  an 
Indian,  he  will  inquire  its  use,  and  promptly  give  it  a  name, 
including  within  itself,  perhaps,  an  entire  definition.  The 
Indian  never  kneels  ;  so,  when  Eliot  translated  hneeling^  the 
word  which  he  was  compelled  to  form  fills  a  line,  and  num- 
bers eleven  syllables.  As  in  early  days  books  were  written 
in  unbroken  lines  without  any  division  of  the  parts  of  a 
sentence,  so  the  savage,  in  his  speech,  runs  word  into  word, 
till  at  last  a  single  one  appears  to  include  the  whole  propo- 
sition. By  this  process  of  aggregation,  a  simple  root  is 
often  buried  beneath  its  environments ;  rapidity  of  move- 
ment and  grace  are  lost;  and  speech  is  encumbered  with 
the  expressive  masses  which  it  has  heaped  together.  The 
words  that  enter  into  the  compound  are  not  melted  into 
each  other  ;  nothing  resembling  a  chemical  affinity  takes 
place;  but  the  compound  word  is  like  patchwork*,  the  masses 
that  are  joined  together  remain  heterogeneous.  The  union 
resembles  clumsy  mechanism,  where  the  contrivance  lies 
bare,  and  forces  itself  upon  the  eye.  The  cultivated  man, 
with  select  instruments,  expresses  every  idea ;  the  savage  is 
for  ever  coining  words ;  and  the  original  character  of  his 
language  permits  him  to  multiply  them  at  will. 

Still  more  is  the  character  of  synthesis  observable  in  the 
pronoun.  That  part  of  speech  hardly  existed  in  a  separate 
form ;  at  least,  in  a  separate  form,  was  rarely  in  use.  Its 
principal  office,  in  the  Algonkin  dialects,  is  to  define  the 
relations  of  the  noun  and  the  verb.  The  pronoun  knows  no 
distinction  of  genders  for  male  and  female ;  one  form  is 
common  to  both ;  another  form  is  for  the  neuter,  as  in  Latin 


Chap.  XXXVI.    INDIANS  EAST  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI.        413 

there  is  sometimes  a  common  gender,  in  contradistinction  to 
the  neuter.  Hence,  as  nouns  are  always  used  in  connection 
with  pronouns,  there  is  in  the  form  no  distinction  between 
masculine  and  feminine,  but  only  between  the  form  common 
to  both  genders  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  form  applied  to 
the  neuter  on  the  other ;  in  a  word,  betw^een  the  animate 
and  the  inanimate.  The  plural  of  animate  nouns  appears  to 
be  formed  by  an  amalgamation  with  the  pronoun  of  the  third 
person,  and  the  plural  of  inanimate  words  by  an  amalgama- 
tion with  the  corresponding  neuter  pronoun. 

The  use  of  the  pronoun  is,  therefore,  to  modify  nouns 
and  verbs.  The  ideas  which  we  imply  by  case,  with  the 
exception  of  the  possessive,  are  not  ideas  having  relation 
to  pronouns :  the  Indian  languages  have,  therefore,  all  the 
modifications  of  the  noun  that  can  come  from  the  use  of 
pronouns ;  but,  with  the  exception  of  the  genitive,  as  ex- 
pressing possession,  and  marked,  as  in  the  Hebrew,  by  a 
pronominal  affix,  they  have  no  series  of  cases.  The  rela- 
tions of  case  are  expressed  by  pronouns  affixed  to  the 
verb. 

The  use  of  the  adjective  is  in  a  still  greater  degree  syn- 
thetical. There  is  no  such  separate  word,  in  an  Algonkin 
dialect,  as  a  simple  adjective.  As  the  noun  is  used  only  in 
its  relation,  so  the  adjective  is  used  with  reference  to  that 
which  it  qualifies.  Its  form,  when  it  stands  alone,  is  that  of 
an  impersonal  verb. 

The  peculiar  economy  of  the  American  languages  is  best 
illustrated  in  their  verbs.  Though  destitute  of  the  substan- 
tive verb,  of  which  feeble  and  uncertain  traces  only  can  be 
found  in  the  Chippewa,  and  perhaps  in  the  Muskohgee,  and 
those  only  after  the  presence  of  Europeans,  yet  the  verb 
is  the  dominant  part  of  speech,  swallowing  up,  as  it  w^ere, 
and  including  within  itself,  the  pronoun,  the  substantive, 
and  the  adjective.  Declension,  cases,  articles,  are  deficient ; 
but  every  thing  is  conjugated.  The  adjective  assumes  a 
verbal  termination,  and  is  conjugated  as  a  verb ;  the  idea 
expressed  by  a  noun  is  clothed  in  verbal  forms,  and  at  once 
does  the  office  of  a  verb. 

Here,  also,  the  synthetic  character  predominates.     Does 


414  COLONIAL  HISTOKY.  Chap.  XXXVI. 

an  adjective  assume  a  verbal  form,  it  takes  to  itself  also  the 
person  or  thing  which  it  qualifies ;  and  the  adjective,  the 
pronoun  representing  the  subject,  and  the  verbal  form,  are 
included  in  one  word.  Thus  far  the  American  dialects  have 
analogies  with  the  Greek  and  Latin.  But  the  American  go 
farther.  The  accessory  idea  of  case  is  represented  in  a 
form  of  the  verb  by  means  of  a  pronominal  affix.  An  Al- 
gonkin,  when  he  says  1  love  or  I  hate^  simultaneously, 
though,  as  Trumbull  reasons,  not  necessarily,  expresses  the 
object  of  his  love  or  hatred.  As  each  noun  is  blended  with 
a  pronominal  prefix,  as  each  adjective  amalgamates  with 
the  subject  which  it  qualifies,  so  each  active  verb  includes 
in  one  and  the  same  word  one  pronoun  representing  its 
subject,  and  another  representing  its  object.  Nor  does  the 
synthetic  tendency  stop  here.  An  adjective  may  first  be 
melted  into  the  substantive,  and  the  compound  word  may 
then  assume  verbal  forms,  and  receive  all  the  changes,  and 
include  within  itself  all  the  relations,  which  those  forms  can 
express. 

There  are  in  the  American  dialects  no  genuine  declen- 
sions; it  is  otherwise  with  conjugations.  The  verbs  have 
true  grammatical  forms,  as  fixed  and  as  regular  as  those  of 
Greek  or  Sanscrit.  The  relations  of  number  and  person, 
both  with  regard  to  the  agent  and  the  object,  are  included 
in  the  verb  by  means  of  significant  pronominal  syllables, 
which  are  prefixed,  inserted,  or  annexed.  The  relations  of 
time  are  expressed  by  the  insertion  in  part  of  unmeaning, 
in  part,  it  may  be,  of  significant,  syllables  ;  and,  as  many 
supplementary  syllables  may  not  always  be  easily  piled  one 
upon  another,  changes  of  consonants,  as  well  as,  in  a  slight 
degree,  changes  of  vowels,  and  elisions  take  place;  and 
sometimes  unmeaning  syllables  are  inserted  for  the  sake  of 
euphony.  Inflection,  agglutination,  and  euphonic  changes, 
all  take  place  in  the  conjugation  of  the  Chippewa  verb.  Of 
varieties  of  terminations  and  forms,  the  oldest  languages 
and  those  in  the  earliest  stage  of  development  have  the 
most. 

But  not  only  does  the  Algonkin  verb  admit  the  number 
of  forms   required  for  the   diversity  of  time   and  mode; 


Chap.  XXXVI.     INDIANS  EAST  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI.        415 

it  has  numerous  conjugations.  An  action  may  be  often 
repeated,  and  a  frequentative  conjugation  follows.  The 
idea  of  causation,  which  the  Indian  does  not  express  ab- 
stractly, but  only  synthetically,  makes  a  demand,  as  in  the 
Hebrew,  for  a  new  conjugation.  Every  verb  may  be  used 
negatively  as  well  as  positively ;  it  may  include  in  itself 
an  animate  object,  or  the  object  may  be  inanimate ;  and 
whether  it  expresses  a  simple  action,  or,  again,  is  a  fre- 
quentative, it  may  have  a  reflex  signification,  like  the 
middle  voice  of  a  Greek  verb ;  and  every  one  of  these  acci- 
dents gives  birth  to  a  series  of  new  forms.  Then,  since  the 
Indian  verb  includes  within  itself  the  agent  and  the  object, 
it  may  pass  through  as  many  transitions  as  the  persons  and 
numbers  of  the  pronouns  wdll  admit  of  different  combinar 
tions ;  and  each  of  these  combinations  may  be  used  positively 
or  negatively,  with  a  reflex  or  a  causative  signification.  In 
this  manner,  changes  are  so  multiplied  that  the  number  of 
possible  forms  of  a  Chippewa  verb  is  said  to  amount  to  five 
or  six  thousand  :  in  other  words,  the  number  of  possible 
variations  is  indefinitely  great. 

Such  are  the  cumbersome  processes  by  which  synthetical 
languages  express  thought.  For  the  want  of  analysis,  the 
savage  obtains  no  mastery  over  the  forms  of  his  language ; 
nay,  the  forms  themselves  are  used  in  a  manner  which  to 
us  would  seem  anomalous,  and  to  the  Indian  can  appear 
regular  only  because  his  mind  receives  the  complex  thought 
without  analysis.  To  a  verb  having  a  nominative  singular 
and  an  accusative  plural,  a  plural  termination  is  often  affixed. 
The  verb,  says  Eliot,  is  thus  changed  to  an  adnoun.  Again, 
if  with  a  verb  vrhich  is  qualified  by  an  adverb  the  idea  of 
futurity  is  to  be  connected,  the  sign  of  futurity  is  attached 
promiscuously  either  to  the  verb  or  the  adverb ;  the  Indian 
is  satisfied  on  finding  the  expression  of  futurity  somewhere 
in  the  group. 

From  these  investigations,  two  momentous  conclusions 
follow.  The  grammatical  forms  which  constitute  the  or- 
ganization of  a  language  are  not  the  work  of  civilization, 
but  of  nature.  It  is  not  writers,  nor  arbitrary  conventions, 
that  give  laws  to  language :   the  forms  of  grammar,  the 


416  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVI. 

power  of  combinations,  the  possibility  of  inversions,  spring 
from  within  us,  and  are  a  consequence  of  our  own  organi- 
zation.    If  language  is  a  human  invention,  it  was  the  in- 
vention of   savage  man ;    and  this  creation  of  barbarism 
would  be  a  higher  trophy  to  human  power  than  any  achieve- 
ment of  civilization.     The  study  of  these  rudest  dialects 
tends  to  prove,  if  it  does  not  conclusively  prove,  that  it  was 
not  man  who  made  language,  but  He  who  made  man  gave 
him  utterance.     Speech  in  copiousness,  and  with  abundance 
and  regularity  of  forms,  belongs  to  the  American  savage, 
because  it  belongs  to  man.     From  the  country  of  the  Es- 
quimaux to  the  Oronoco,  and  from  the  burning  climes  on 
the  borders  of  that  stream  to  the  ice  of  the  Straits  of  Ma- 
gellan, the  primitive  American  languages,  entirely  differing 
in  their  roots,  have,  with  slight  exceptions,   one  and  the 
same  physiognomy.     Remarkable  analogies  of  grammatical 
structure  pervade  the  most  refined  as  well  as  the  most  gross. 
Idioms  as  unlike  as  Sclavonic  and  Celtic   resemble   each 
other   in   their   internal   mechanism.      In   the   Esquimaux, 
there  is  an  immense  number  of  forms,  derived  from  the 
regimen  of  pronouns.     The  same  is  true  of  the  Basque  lan- 
guage in  Spain  and  of  the  Congo  in  Africa.     Here  is  a 
marvellous  coincidence  in  the  structure  of   languages,  at 
points  so  remote,  among  three   races  so  different  as  the 
white  man  of  the  Pyrenees,  the  black  man  of  Congo,  and 
the  copper-colored  tribes  of  North  America.     Now  a  char- 
acteristic so  extensive  is  to  be  accounted  for  only  on  some 
general  principle.     It  pervades  languages  of  different  races 
and  different  continents :  it  must,  then,  be  the  result  of  a 
law.     As  nature,  when  it  rose  from  the  chaos  of  its  convul- 
sions and  its  deluges,  appeared  with  its  mountains,  its  basins, 
and  its  valleys,  all  so  fashioned  that  man  could  cultivate 
and  adorn  them,  but  not  shape  them  anew  at  his  will,  so 
language,  in  its  earliest  period,  has  a  fixed  character,  which 
culture,  by  weeding  out  superfluities,  inventing  happy  con- 
nections, teaching   the   measure   of  ellipsis,    and,   through 
analysis,  perfecting  the  mastery  of  the  mind  over  its  instru- 
ments, may  polish,  enliven,  and  improve,  but  cannot  essen- 
tially change.    Men  have  admired  the  magnificence  displayed 


I 


Chap.  XXXVI.    INDIANS  EAST  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI.        417. 

in  the  mountains,  the  rivers,  the  prolific  vegetation  of  the 
New  World ;  in  the  dialect  of  the  wildest  tribe,  it  can  show 
a  nobler  work,  of  a  Power  higher  than  that  of  man. 

Another  and  a  more  certain  conclusion  may  be  drawn. 
It  has  been  asked  if  our  Indians  are  not  the  wrecks  of  more 
civilized  nations.  Their  language  refutes  the  hypothesis ; 
every  one  of  its  forms  is  a  witness  that  their  ancestors  were, 
like  themselves,  not  yet  disinthralled  from  nature.  The 
character  of  each  Indian  language  is  one  continued,  uni- 
versal, all-pervading  synthesis.  They  to  whom  these  lan- 
guages were  the  mother  tongue  were  still  in  that  earliest 
stage  of  intellectual  culture  where  reflection  and  analysis 
have  not  begun. 

Meantime,  from  the  first  visit  of  Europeans,  a  change  has 
been  preparing  in  the  American  tongues.  The  stage  of 
progress,  in  the  organic  structure  of  a  language,  is  that  of 
intermixture.  To  the  study  of  the  American  dialects  the 
missionaries  carried  the  habit  of  analysis,  and  enriched  the 
speech  of  the  barbarians  with  the  experience  of  civilization. 
Hence  new  ideas  are  gaining  utterance,  and  new  forms  are 
springing  up.  The  half-breeds  grow  unwilling  to  indulge 
in  diffuse  combinations,  but  are  ready  to  employ  each  word 
distinctly  and  by  itself;  and  the  wild  man  understands,  if 
he  does  not  approve,  the  innovation.  Already  the  culti- 
vated Chippewa  is  gaining  the  power  of  expressing  a  noun 
of  relation,  independent  of  its  relations ;  and  the  substantive 
verb  begins  to  glimmer  in  various  tongues  from  Lake  Su- 
perior to  the  homes  of  the  Choctaws. 


27 


418  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVH. 


CHAPTER   XXXVH. 

THE  ABORIGINES  :    THEIR   MANNERS,   POLITY,   AND  RELIGION. 

"  The  sociableness  of  the  nature  of  man  appears  in  the 
wildest  of  them."  To  Indians  returning  to  their  family  no 
one  would  offer  hinderance,  "  thus  confessing  the  sweetness 
of  their  homes."  They  love  society,  and  the  joining  to- 
gether of  houses  and  towns.  With  long  poles  fixed  in  the 
gi'ound,  and  bent  towards  each  other  at  the  top,  covered 
with  birch  or  chestnut  bark,  and  hung  on  the  inside  with 
embroidered  mats,  having  no  door  but  a  loose  skin,  no 
hearth  but  the  ground,  no  chimney  but  an  opening  in  the 
roof,  the  wigwam  is  quickly  constructed  and  easily  removed. 
Its  size,  whether  it  be  round  or  oblong,  is  in  proportion  to 
the  number  of  families  that  are  to  dwell  together ;  and 
there,  in  one  smoky  cell,  the  whole  clan  —  men,  children, 
and  women  —  are  huddled  together,  careless  of  cleanliness, 
and  making  no  privacy  of  actions  of  which  some  irrational 
animals  seem  ashamed. 

As  the  languages  of  the  American  tribes  were  limited  by 
the  material  world,  so,  in  private  life,  the  senses  held  domin- 
ion. The  passion  of  the  savage  was  liberty;  he  demanded 
license  to  gratify  his  animal  instincts.  To  act  out  himself, 
to  follow  the  propensities  of  his  nature,  seemed  his  system 
of  morals.  The  supremacy  of  conscience,  the  rights  of 
reason,  were  not  subjects  of  reflection  to  those  who  had  no 
name  for  continence.  The  idea  of  chastity,  as  a  social  duty, 
was  but  feebly  developed  among  them ;  and  the  observer  of 
their  customs  would,  at  first,  believe  them  to  have  been  ig- 
norant of  restraint.  If  "  the  kindly  flames  of  nature  burned 
in  wild  humanity,"  their  love  never  became  a  frenzy  or  a 
devotion ;  for  indulgence  destroyed  its  energy  and  its  purity. 

And  yet  no  nation  has   ever  been  found   without  some 


Chap.  XXXVII.     MANNERS   OF  THE  INDIANS.  419 

practical  confession  of  the  duty  of  self-denial.  "  God  hath 
planted  in  the  hearts  of  the  wildest  of  the  sonnes  of  men  a 
high  and  honorable  esteem  of  the  marriage  bed,  insomuch 
that  they  universally  submit  unto  it,  and  hold  its  violation 
abominable."  Neither  might  marriages  be  contracted  be- 
tween kindred  of  near  degree;  the  Iroquois  might  choose  a 
wife  of  the  same  tribe  with  himself,  but  not  of  the  same 
cabin ;  the  Algonkin  must  look  beyond  those  who  used  the 
same  totem.^  or  family  symbol ;  the  Cherokee  would  marry  at 
once  a  mother  and  her  daughter,  but  would  never  marry  his 
own  immediate  kindred. 

On  forming  an  engagement,  the  bridegroom,  or,  if  he 
were  poor,  his  friends  and  neighbors,  made  a  present  to  the 
bride's  father,  of  whom  no  dowry  was  expected.  The  ac- 
ceptance of  the  presents  perfected  the  contract;  the  wife 
was  purchased ;  and,  for  a  season  at  least,  the  husband, 
surrendering  his  gains  as  a  hunter  to  her  family,  had  a  home 
in  her  father's  lodge. 

But,  even  in  marriage,  the  Indian  abhorred  constraint ; 
and,  from  Florida  to  the  St.  Lawrence,  polygamy  was  per- 
mitted, though  at  the  north  it  was  not  common.  In  a 
happy  union,  affection  was  fostered  and  preserved ;  and  the 
wilderness  could  show  wigwams  where  "  couples  had  lived 
together  thirty,  forty  years."  Yet  Love  did  not  always 
light  his  happiest  torch  at  the  nuptials  of  the  children  of 
nature,  and  marriage  among  the  forests  had  its  sorrows  and 
its  crimes.  The  infidelities  of  the  husband  sometimes  drove 
the  helpless  wife  to  suicide :  the  faithless  wife  had  no  pro- 
tector ;  her  husband  insulted  or  disfigured  her  at  will ;  and 
death  for  adultery  was  unrevenged.  Divorce,  also,  was 
permitted,  even  for  occasions  beside  adultery ;  it  took  place 
without  formality,  by  a  simple  separation  or  desertion,  and, 
where  there  was  no  offspring,  was  of  easy  occurrence. 
Children  were  the  strongest  bond ;  for,  if  the  mother  was 
discarded,  it  was  the  unwritten  law  of  the  red  man  that 
she  should  herself  retain  those  whom  she  had  borne  or 
fostered. 

The  sorrows  of  child-bearing  were  mitigated  to  the 
Indian  mother,  and  her  travail  was  comparatively  easy  and 


420  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVIL 

speedy.  "In  one  quarter  of  an  hour,  a  woman  would  be 
merry  in  the  house,  and  delivered,  and  merry  againe  ;  and 
within  two  days,  abroad ;  and  after  four  or  five  dayes,  at 
worke."  Energy  of  will  surmounted  the  pangs  of  child- 
birth. The  woman  who  uttered  complaints  or  groans  was 
esteemed  worthy  to  be  but  the  mother  of  cowards.  Yet 
death  sometimes  followed.  The  pregnant  woman  continued 
her  usual  toils,  bore  her  wonted  burdens,  followed  her  fam- 
ily even  in  its  winter  rambles.  How  helpless  the  Indian 
infant,  born,  without  shelter,  amidst  storms  and  ice !  But 
fear  nothing  for  him :  God  has  placed  near  him  a  guardian 
angel,  that  can  triumph  over  the  severities  of  nature  ;  the 
sentiment  of  maternity  is  by  his  side ;  and,  so  long  as  his 
mother  breathes,  he  is  safe.  The  squaw  loves  her  child 
with  instinctive  passion  ;  and,  if  she  does  not  manifest  it 
by  lively  caresses,  her  tenderness  is  real^  wakeful,  and  con- 
stant. No  savage  mother  ever  trusted  her  babe  to  a  hire- 
ling nurse ;  no  savage  mother  ever  put  away  her  own  child 
to  suckle  that  of  another.  To  the  cradle,  consisting  of  thin 
pieces  of  light  wood,  and  gayly  ornamented  with  quills  of 
the  porcupine,  and  beads,  and  rattles,  the  nursling  is  firmly 
attached,  and  carefully  wrapped  in  furs ;  and  the  infant, 
thus  swathed,  its  back  to  the  mother's  back,  is  borne  as  the 
topmost  burden,  —  its  dark  eyes  now  cheerfully  flashing 
light,  now  accompanying  with  tears  the  wailings  which  the 
plaintive  melodies  of  the  carrier  cannot  hush.  Or,  while 
the  squaw  toils  in  the  field,  she  hangs  her  child,  as  spring 
does  its  blossoms,  on  the  boughs  of  a  tree,  that  it  may  be 
rocked  by  breezes  from  the  land  of  souls,  and  soothed  to 
sleep  by  the  lullaby  of  the  birds.  Does  the  mother  die,  the 
nursling —  such  is  Indian  compassion  —  shares  her  grave. 

On  quitting  the  cradle,  the  children  are  left  nearly  naked 
in  the  cabin,  to  grow  hardy,  and  learn  the  use  of  their 
limbs.  Juvenile  sports  are  the  same  everywhere  ;  children 
invent  them  for  themselves;  and  the  traveller,  who  finds 
everywhere  in  the  wide  world  the  same  games,  may  rightly 
infer  that  the  Father  of  the  great  human  family  himself 
instructs  the  innocence  of  childhood  in  its  amusements. 
There  is  no  domestic  government ;  the  young  do  as  they 


Chap.  XXXVII.    MANNERS   OF  THE  INDIANS.  421 

will.  They  are  never  earnestly  reproved,  injured,  or  beaten ; 
a  dash  of  cold  water  in  the  face  is  their  heaviest  punishment. 
If  they  assist  in  the  labors  of  the  household,  it  is  as  a  pas- 
time, not  as  a  charge.  Yet  they  show  respect  to  the  chiefs, 
and  defer  with  docility  to  those  of  their  cabin.  The  attach- 
ment of  savages  to  their  offspring  is  extreme  ;  and  they 
cannot  bear  separation  from  them.  Hence  every  attempt 
at  founding  schools  for  their  children  was  a  failure ;  a  mis- 
sionary would  gather  a  little  flock  about  him,  and  of  a 
sudden,  writes  Le  Jeune,  "  my  birds  flew  away."  From 
their  insufficient  and  irregular  supplies  of  clothing  and 
food,  they  learn  to  endure  hunger  and  rigorous  seasons;  of 
themselves  they  become  fleet  of  foot,  and  skilful  in  swim- 
ming ;  their  courage  is  fed  by  tales  respecting  their  ances- 
tors, till  they  burn  with  a  love  of  glory  to  be  acquired  by 
valor  and  address.  So  soon  as  the  child  can  grasp  the  bow 
and  arrow,  they  are  in  his  hand ;  and,  as  there  was  joy  in 
the  wigwam  at  his  birth,  and  his  first  cutting  of  a  tooth,  so 
a  festival  is  kept  for  his  earliest  success  in  the  chase.  The 
Indian  young  man  is  educated  in  the  school  of  nature. 
The  influences  by  which  he  is  surrounded  kindle  within 
him  the  passion  for  war :  as  he  grows  up,  he,  in  his  turn, 
takes  up  the  war-song,  of  which  the  echoes  never  die  away 
on  the  boundless  plains  of  the  west ;  he  travels  the  war-path 
in  search  of  an  encounter  with  an  enemy,  that  he,  too,  at 
the  great  war-dance  and  feast  of  his  band,  may  boast  of  his 
exploits  ;  may  enumerate  his  gallant  deeds  by  the  envied 
feathers  of  the  war  eagle  that  decorate  his  hair ;  and  keep 
the  record  of  his  wounds  by  shining  marks  of  vermilion  on 
his  skin. 

The  savages  are  proud  of  idleness.  At  home,  they  do 
little  but  cross  their  arms  and  sit  listlessly  ;  or  engage  in 
games  of  chance,  hazarding  all  their  possessions  on  the 
result;  or  meet  in  council;  or  sing,  and  eat,  and  play,  and 
sleep.  The  greatest  toils  of  the  men  were  to  perfect  the 
palisades  of  the  forts ;  to  manufacture  a  boat  out  of  a  tree 
by  means  of  fire  and  a  stone  hatchet ;  to  repair  their  cabins ; 
to  get  ready  instruments  of  war  or  the  chase ;  and  to  adorn 
their  persons.     Woman  is  the  laborer;  woman  bears  the 


422  COLONIAL  HISTOKY.  Chap.  XXXVIL 

burdens  of  life.  The  food  that  is  raised  from  the  earth  is 
the  fruit  of  her  industry.  With  no  instrument  but  a 
wooden  mattock,  a  shell,  or  a  shoulder-blade  of  the  buffalo, 
she  plants  the  maize  and  the  beans.  She  drives  the  black- 
birds from  the  cornfield,  breaks  the  weeds,  and,  in  duo 
season,  gathers  the  harvest.  She  pounds  the  parched  corn, 
dries  the  buffalo  meat,  and  prepares  for  winter  the  store  of 
wild  fruits ;  she  brings  home  the  game  which  her  husband 
has  killed ;  she  carries  the  wood,  and  draws  the  water,  and 
spreads  the  repast.  If  the  chief  constructs  the  keel  of  the 
canoe,  it  is  woman  who  stitches  the  bark  with  split  liga- 
ments of  the  pine  root,  and  sears  the  seams  with  resinous 
gum.  If  the  men  prepare  the  poles  for  the  wigwam,  it  is 
woman  who  builds  it,  and,  in  times  of  journeyings,  trans- 
ports it  on  her  shoulders.  The  Indian's  wife  was  his  slave ; 
and  the  number  of  his  slaves  was  a  criterion  of  his  wealth. 

The  Indians  of  our  republic  had  no  calendar  of  their 
own ;  their  languages  have  no  word  for  year,  and  they 
reckon  time  by  the  return  of  snow  or  the  springing  of  the 
flowers ;  their  months  are  named  from  that  which  the  earth 
produces  in  them ;  and  their  almanac  is  kept  in  the  sky  by 
the  birds,  whose  flight  announces  the  progress  of  the  sea- 
sons. The  brute  creation  gives  them  warning  of  the  com- 
ing storm ;  the  motion  of  the  sun  marks  the  hour  of  the 
day ;  and  the  distinctions  of  time  are  noted,  not  in  numbers, 
but  in  words  that  breathe  the  grace  and  poetry  of  nature. 

The  aboriginal  tribes  of  the  United  States  depended  for 
food  on  the  chase,  fisheries,  and  agriculture.  They  kept  no 
herds  ;  they  never  were  shepherds.  The  bison  is  difficult  to 
tame,  and  its  female  yields  little  milk,  of  which  the  use  was 
unknown  to  the  red  man  :  water  was  his  only  drink.  The 
moose,  the  bear,  the  deer,  and  at  the  west  the  buffalo,  be- 
sides smaller  game  and  fowl,  were  pursued  with  arrows 
tipped  with  hart's-horn  or  eagles'  claws,  or  pointed  stones. 
With  nets  and  spears  fish  were  taken,  and,  for  want  of  salt, 
were  cured  by  smoke.  Wild  fruits  and  abundant  berries 
were  a  resource  in  their  season ;  and  troops  of  girls,  with 
baskets  of  bark,  would  gather  the  native  strawberry.  But 
all  the  tribes  south  of  the   St.  Lawrence,  except  remote 


Chap.  XXX Vn.    MANNERS  OF  THE  INDIANS.  423 

ones  on  the  north-east  and  the  north-west,  cultivated  the 
earth.  Unlike  the  people  of  the  Old  World,  they  were 
at  once  hunters  and  tillers  of  the  ground.  The  contrast 
was  due  to  the  character  of  their  grain.  Wheat  or  rye 
would  have  been  a  useless  gift  to  the  Indian,  who  had 
neither  plough  nor  sickle.  The  maize  springs  luxuriantly 
from  a  warm,  new  field,  and  in  the  rich  soil,  with  little  aid 
from  culture,  outstrips  the  weeds;  bears,  not  thirty,  not 
fifty,  but  a  thousand  fold ;  if  once  dry,  is  hurt  neither  by 
heat  nor  cold  ;  may  be  preserved  in  a  pit  or  a  cave  for  years, 
ay,  and  for  centuries ;  is  gathered  from  the  field  by  the 
hand,  without  knife  or  reaping-hook ;  and  becomes  nutri- 
tious food  by  a  simple  roasting  before  a  fire.  A  little  of  its 
parched  meal,  with  water  from  the  brook,  was  often  a  din- 
ner and  supper  ;  and  the  warrior,  with  a  small  supply  of  it 
in  a  basket  at  his  back,  or  in  a  leathern  girdle,  and  with  hia 
bow  and  arrows,  is  ready  for  travel  at  a  moment's  warning. 
Tobacco  was  not  forgotten ;  and  the  cultivation  of  beans, 
and  the  trailing  plant  which  we  have  learned  of  them  to 
call  the  squash,  completed  their  husbandry. 

During  the  mild  season,  there  may  have  been  little  suf- 
fering. But  thrift  was  wanting;  the  stores  collected  by 
the  industry  of  the  women  were  squandered  in  festivities. 
The  hospitality  of  the  Indian  has  rarely  been  questioned. 
The  stranger  enters  his  cabin,  by  day  or  by  night,  without 
asking  leave,  and  is  entertained  as  freely  as  a  thrush  or  a 
blackbird  that  regales  himself  on  the  luxuries  of  the  fruit- 
ful grove.  He  will  take  his  rest  abroad,  that  he  may  give 
up  his  own  skin  or  mat  of  sedge  to  his  guest.  N"or  is  the 
traveller  questioned  as  to  the  purpose  of  his  visit ;  he 
chooses  his  own  time  freely  to  deliver  his  message.  Festi- 
vals, too,  were  common,  at  some  of  which  it  was  the  rule  to 
eat  every  thing  that  was  offered ;  and  the  indulgence  of 
appetite  surpassed  belief.  But  what  could  be  more  misera- 
ble than  the  tribes  of  the  north  and  north-west,  in  the  depth 
of  winter,  suffering  from  an  annual  famine  ;  driven  by 
the  intense  cold  to  sit  indolently  in  the  smoke  round  the 
fire  in  the  cabin,  and  to  fast  for  days  together  ;  and  then, 
again,  compelled,  by  faintness  for  want  of  sustenance,  to 


'4!24  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVII. 

reel  into   the  woods,   and  gather  moss  or  bark  for  a  thin 
decoction,   that   might   at   least   relieve   the   extremity  of. 
hunger  ? 

Famine  gives  a  terrible  energy  to  the  brutal  part  of  our 
nature.  A  shipwreck  will  make  cannibals  of  civilized  men  ; 
a  siege  changes  the  refinements  of  urbanity  into  excesses  at 
which  humanity  shudders  ;  a  retreating  army  abandons  its 
wounded.  The  hunting  tribes  have  the  affections  of  men ; 
but,  among  them,  extremity  of  want  produces  like  results. 
The  aged  and  infirm  meet  with  little  tenderness  ;  the  hunt- 
ers, as  they  roam  the  wilderness,  abandon  their  old  men ;  if 
provisions  fail,  the  feeble  drop  down,  and  are  lost,  or  life  is 
shortened  by  a  blow. 

The  fate  of  the  desperately  ill  was  equally  sad.  Diseases 
were  believed  to  spring,  in  part,  from  natural  causes,  for 
which  natural  remedies  were  prescribed.  Of  these,  the 
best  was  the  vapor  batli,  prepared  in  a  tent  covered  with 
skins,  and  warmed  by  means  of  hot  stones  ;  or  decoctions  of 
bark,  or  roots,  or  herbs,  were  used.  Graver  maladies  were 
inexplicable,  and  their  causes  and  cures  formed  a  part  of 
their  religious  superstitions  ;  but  those  who  lingered  with 
them,  especially  the  aged,  were  sometimes  neglected,  and 
sometimes  put  to  death. 

The  clothing  of  the  natives  was,  in  summer,  but  a  piece 
of  skin,  like  an  apron  round  the  waist ;  in  winter,  a  bear- 
skin, or,  more  commonly,  robes  made  of  the  skins  of  the  fox 
and  the  beaver.  Their  feet  were  protected  by  soft  mocca^ 
sons ;  and  to  these  were  bound  the  broad  snow-shoes,  on 
which,  though  cumbersome  to  the  novice,  the  Indian  hunter 
could  leap  like  the  roe.  Of  the  women,  head,  arms,  and 
legs  were  uncovered  ;  a  mat  or  a  skin,  neatly  prepared,  tied 
over  the  shoulders,  and  fastened  to  the  waist  by  a  girdle, 
extended  from  the  neck  to  the  knees.  They  glittered  with 
tufts  of  elk  hair,  brilliantly  dyed  in  scarlet ;  and  strings  of 
the  various  kinds  of  shells  were  their  pearls  and  diamonds. 
The  summer  garments,  of  moose  and  deer  skins,  were 
painted  of  many  colors  ;  and  the  fairest  feathers  of  the  tur- 
key, fastened  by  threads  made  from  wild  hemp  and  nettle, 
were  curiously  wrought  into  mantles.     The  claws  of   the 


Chap.  XXXVII.     POLITY  OF  THE  INDIANS.  425 

grisly  bear  formed  a  proud  collar  for  a  war-chief ;  a  piece 
of  an  enemy's  scalp,  with  a  tuft  of  long  hair,  painted  red, 
glittered  on  the  stem  of  their  war-pipes  ;  the  wing  of  a  red- 
bird,  or  the  beak  and  plumage  of  a  raven,  decorated  their 
locks  ;  the  skin  of  a  rattlesnake  was  w^orn  round  the  arm  of 
their  chiefs ;  the  skin  of  the  polecat,  bound  round  the  leg, 
was  their  order  of  the  garter,  emblem  of  noble  daring.  A 
warrior's  dress  was  often  a  history  of  his  deeds.  His  skin 
was  tattooed  with  figures  of  animals,  of  leaves,  of  flowers, 
and  painted  with  lively  and  shining  colors. 

Some  had  the  nose  tipped  with  blue,  the  eyebrows,  eyes, 
and  cheeks  tinged  with  black,  and  the  rest  of  the  face  red ; 
others  had  black,  red,  and  blue  stripes  drawn  from  the  ears 
to  the  mouth  ;  others  had  a  broad,  black  band,  like  a  ribbon, 
drawn  from  ear  to  ear  across  the  eyes,  with  smaller  bands 
on  the  cheeks.  When  they  made  visits,  and  when  they 
assembled  in  council,  they  painted  themselves  gloriously, 
delighting  especially  in  vermilion. 

There  can  be  no  society  withoiit  government ;  but,  among 
the  Indian  tribes  on  the  soil  of  our  republic,  there  was  not 
only  no  written  law,  there  was  no  traditionary  expression  of 
law;  government  rested  on  opinion  and  usage,  and  the 
motives  to  the  usage  were  never  imbodied  in  language ; 
they  gained  utterance  only  in  the  fact,  and  power  only  from 
opinion.  No  ancient  legislator  believed  that  human  society 
could  be  maintained  with  so  little  artifice.  Unconscious  of 
political  principles,  they  remiained  under  the  influence  of 
instincts.  Their  forms  of  government  grew  out  of  their 
passions  and  their  wants,  and  were  therefore  everywhere 
nearly  the  same.  Without  a  code  of  laws,  without  a  dis- 
tinct recognition  of  succession  in  the  magistracy  by  inheri- 
tance or  election,  government  was  conducted  harmoniously 
by  the  influence  of  native  genius,  virtue,  and  experience. 

Prohibitory  laws  were  hardly  sanctioned  by  savage  opin- 
ion. The  wdld  man  hates  restraint,  and  loves  to  do  what  is 
riglit  in  his  own  eyes.  "  The  Illinois,"  writes  Marest,  "  are 
absolute  masters  of  themselves,  subject  to  no  law."  The 
Delawares,  it  was  said,  "  are,  in  general,  wholly  unacquainted 
with  civil  laws  and  proceedings,  nor  have  any  kind  of  notion 


426 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXX VIL 


of  civil  judicatures,  of  persons  being  arraigned  and  tried, 
condemned  or  acquitted."  As  there  was  no  commerce,  no 
coin,  no  promissory  notes,  no  employment  of  others  for  hire, 
there  were  no  contracts.  Exchanges  were  but  a  reciprocity 
of  presents,  and  mutual  gifts  were  the  only  traffic.  Arrests 
and  prisons,  lawyers  and  sheriffs,  were  unknown.  Each 
man  was  his  own  protector ;  and,  as  there  was  no  public 
justice,  each  man  issued  to  himself  his  letter  of  reprisals, 
and  became  his  own  avenger.  In  case  of  death  by  violence, 
the  departed  shade  could  not  rest  till  appeased  by  a  retalia- 
tion. His  kindred  would  "  go  a  thousand  miles,  for  the 
purpose  of  revenge,  over  hills  and  mountains ;  through 
large  cane-swamps,  full  of  grape-vines  and  briers ;  over 
broad  lakes,  rapid  rivers,  and  deep  creeks  ;  and  all  the  way 
endangered  by  poisonous  snakes,  exposed  to  the  extremities 
of  heat  and  cold,  to  hunger  and  thirst."  And,  blood  being 
once  shed,  the  rule  of  reciprocity  involved  family  in  the 
mortal  strife  against  family,  tribe  against  tribe,  often  con- 
tinuing from  generation  to  generation.  Yet  mercy  could 
make  itself  heard  even  among  barbarians ;  and  peace  was 
restored  by  atoning  presents,  if  they  were  enough  to  cover 
up  the  graves  of  the  dead. 

The  acceptance  of  the  gifts  pacified  the  families  of  those 
who  were  at  variance.  In  savage  life,  which  admits  no 
division  of  labor,  and  has  but  the  same  pursuit  for  all,  the 
bonds  of  relationship  are  widely  extended.  Families  remain 
undivided,  having  a  common  emblem,  which  designates  all 
their  members  as  effectually  as  with  us  the  name.  The  limit 
of  the  family  is  the  limit  of  the  interdicted  degrees  of  con- 
sanguinity for  marriage.  They  hold  the  bonds  of  brother- 
hood so  dear,  that  a  brother  commonly  pays  the  debt  of  a 
deceased  brother,  and  assumes  his  revenge  and  his  perils. 
There  are  no  beggars  among  them,  no  fatherless  children 
unprovided  for.  The  families  that  dwell  together,  hunt 
together,  roam  together,  fight  together,  constitute  a  tribe. 
Danger  from  neighbors,  favoring  union,  leads  to  alliances 
and  confederacies,  just  as  pride,  which  is  a  pervading  ele- 
ment in  Indian  character,  and  shelters  itself  in  every 
lodge,  leads  to  subdivision.     Of  national  affinity,  as  spring- 


Chap.  XXXVII.     POLITY  OF  THE  INDIANS.  427 

ing  from  a  common  language,  the  Algonkin,  the  Wyandot, 
the  Dakota,  the  Mobilian,  each  was  ignorant.  They  did 
not  themselves  know  their  respective  common  lineage,  and 
neither  of  them  had  a  name  embracing  all  its  branches. 

As  the  tribe  was  but  a  union  of  families,  government 
was  a  consequence  of  family  relations,  and  the  head  of 
the  family  was  its  chief.  The  succession  depended  on  birth, 
and  was  inherited  through  the  female  line.  Even  among 
the  Narragansetts,  the  colleague  of  Canonicus  was  his 
nephew.  This  rule  of  descent,  which  sprung  from  the  gen- 
eral licentiousness,  and  was  known  throughout  various 
families  of  tribes,  was  widely  observed,  but  most  of  all 
among  the  Natchez.  Elsewhere,  the  hereditary  right  was 
modified  by  opinion.  Opinion  could  crowd  a  civil  chief 
into  retirement,  and  could  dictate  his  successor.  Nor  was 
assassination  unknown.  The  organization  of  the  savage 
communities  was  like  that  which  with  us  takes  place  at 
the  call  of  a  spontaneous  public  meeting,  where  opinion  in 
advance  designates  the  principal  actors ;  or,  as  wkh  us,  at 
the  death  of  the  head  of  a  large  family,  opinion  within 
the  family  selects  the  best  fitted  of  its  surviving  members 
to  settle  its  affairs.  Doubtless  the  succession  appeared 
sometimes  to  depend  on  the  will  of  the  surviving  matron  ; 
sometimes  to  have  been  consequent  on  birth  ;  sometimes  to 
have  been  the  result  of  the  free  election  of  the  wild  democ- 
racy, and  of  silent  preferences.  There  have  even  been 
chiefs  who  could  not  tell  when,  where,  or  how,  they  ob- 
tained the  sway. 

In  like  manner,  the  different  accounts  of  the  power  of 
the  chief  are  contradictory  only  in  appearance.  Its  limit 
would  be  found  in  his  personal  character.  The  humiliat- 
ing subordination  of  one  will  to  another  was  everywhere 
unknown.  The  Indian  chief  has  no  crown  or  sceptre  or 
guards  ;  no  outward  symbols  of  supremacy,  or  means  of 
giving  validity  to  his  decrees.  The  bounds  of  his  authority 
float  with  the  current  of  opinion  in  the  tribe  ;  he  is  not 
so  much  obeyed  as  followed  with  the  alacrity  of  free  vo- 
lition ;  and  therefore  the  extent  of  his  power  depends  on 
his  personal  character.     There  have  been  chiefs  whose  com- 


428  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVII. 

manding  genius  could  so  overawe  and  sway  the  common 
mind  as  to  gain,  for  a  season,  an  almost  absolute  rule ; 
while  others  had  little  authority,  and,  if  they  used  menaces, 
were  abandoned. 

Each  village  governed  itself  as  if  independent,  and  each 
after  the  same  analogies,  without  variety.  If  the  observer 
had  regard  to  the  sachems,  the  government  seemed  monar- 
chical :  but  as,  of  measures  that  concerned  all,  "  they  would 
not  conclude  aught  unto  which  the  people  were  averse," 
and  every  man  of  due  age  was  admitted  to  council,  it  might 
also  be  described  as  a  democracy.  In  council,  the  people 
werie  guided  by  the  eloquent,  were  carried  away  by  the 
brave ;  and  this  influence,  which  was  recognised  and  regular 
in  its  action,  appeared  to  constitute  an  oligarchy.  The  gov- 
ernments of  the  aborigines  scarcely  differed  from  each 
other,  except  as  accident  gave  a  predominance  to  one  or  the 
other  of  these  elements.  It  is  of  the  Natchez  that  the  most 
wonderful  tales  of  despotism  and  aristocratic  distinctions 
have  been  promulgated.  Their  chiefs,  who,  like  those  of 
the  Hurons,  were  esteemed  descendants  of  the  sun,  had 
greater  power  than  could  have  been  established  in  the  colder 
regions  of  the  north,  where  the  severities  of  nature  compel 
the  savage  to  rely  on  himself  and  to  be  free;  yet  as  the 
Katchez,  in  exterior,  resembled  the  tribes  by  which  they 
were  surrounded,  so  their  customs  and  institutions  were  but 
more  marked  developments  of  the  same  characteristics. 
Everywhere  at  the  north,  there  was  the  same  distribution 
into  families,  and  the  same  order  in  each  separate  town. 
The  affairs  relating  to  the  whole  nation  were  transacted  in 
general  council,  and  with  such  equality  and  such  zeal  for 
the  common  good  that,  while  any  one  might  have  dissented 
with  impunity,  the  voice  of  the  tribe  would  yet  be  unani- 
mous in  its  decisions. 

Their  delight  was  in  assembling  together,  and  listening 
to  messengers  from  abroad.  Seated  in  a  semicircle  on  the 
ground,  in  double  or  triple  rows,  with  the  knees  almost 
meeting  the  face ;  the  painted  and  tattooed  chiefs  adorned 
with  skins  and  plumes,  with  the  beaks  of  the  red-bird  or 
the  claws  of  the  bear ;   each  listener  perhaps  with  a  pipe 


i 


Chap.  XXX Vn.     POLITY   OF  THE   INDIANS.  429 

in  his  mouth,  and  preserving  deep  silence,  —  they  would 
give  solemn  attention  to  the  speaker,  who,  with  great  action 
and  energy  of  language,  delivered  his  message  ;  and,  if  his 
eloquence  pleased,  they  esteemed  him  as  a  god.  Decorum 
was  never  broken  ;  there  were  never  two  speakers  strug- 
gling to  anticipate  each  other ;  they  did  not  express  their 
spleen  by  blows  ;  they  restrained  passionate  invective ;  the 
debate  was  never  disturbed  by  an  uproar ;  questions  of 
order  were  unknown. 

The  record  of  their  treaties  was  kept  by  strings  of  wam- 
pum ;  these  were  their  annals.  When  the  envoys  of  nations 
met  in  solemn  council,  gift  replied  to  gift,  and  belt  to  belt ; 
by  these  the  memory  of  the  speaker  was  refreshed ;  or  he 
would  hold  in  his  hand  a  bundle  of  little  sticks,  and  for 
each  of  them  deliver  a  message.  To  do  this  well  required 
capacity  and  experience.  Each  tribe  had,  therefore,  its 
heralds  or  envoys,  selected  with  reference  only  to  their 
personal  merit,  and  because  they  could  speak  well ;  and 
often  an  orator,  without  the  aid  of  rank  as  a  chief,  by  the 
brilliancy  of  his  eloquence,  swayed  the  minds  of  a  con- 
federacy. That  the  words  of  friendship  might  be  trans- 
mitted safely  through  the  wilderness,  the  red  men  revered 
the  peace-pipe.  The  person  of  him  that  travelled  with  it 
was  sacred.  He  could  disarm  the  young  warrior  as  by  a 
spell,  and  secure  himself  a  fearless  welcome  in  every  cabin. 
Each  village  also  had  its  calumet,  which  was  adorned  by 
the  chief  with  eagles'  feathers,  and  consecrated  in  the  gen- 
eral assembly  of  the  nation.  The  envoys  from  those  desiring 
peace  or  an  alliance  would  come  within  a  short  distance  of 
the  town,  and,  uttering  a  cry,  seat  themselves  on  the  ground. 
The  great  chief,  bearing  the  peace-pipe  of  his  tribe,  with 
its  mouth  pointing  to  the  skies,  goes  forth  to  meet  them, 
accompanied  by  a  long  procession  of  his  clansmen,  chanting 
the  hymn  of  peace.  The  strangers  rise  to  receive  them, 
singing  also  a  song,  to  put  away  all  wars  and  to  bury  all 
revenge.  As  they  meet,  each  party  smokes  the  pipe  of  the 
other,  and  peace  is  ratified.  The  strangers  are  then  con- 
ducted to  the  village ;  the  herald  goes  out  into  the  street 
that  divides  the  wigwams,  and  makes  repeated  proclama- 


430  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVH. 

tion  that  the  guests  are  friends  ;  and  the  glory  of  the  tribe 
is  advanced  by  the  profusion  of  bear's  meat,  and  flesh  of 
dogs,  and  hominy,  which  give  magnificence  to  the  banquets 
in  honor  of  the  embassy. 

But,  if  councils  were  their  recreation,  war  alone  was  the 
avenue  to  glory.  All  other  employment  seemed  unworthy 
of  human  dignity ;  in  warfare  against  the  brute  creation, 
but  still  more  against  man,  they  sought  liberty,  happiness, 
and  renown ;  thus  was  gained  an  honorable  appellation, 
while  the  mean  and  the  obscure  among  them  had  not  even 
a  name.  Hence  to  ask  an  Indian  his  name  was  an  offence ; 
a  chief  would  push  the  question  aside  with  scorn  ;  for  it  im- 
plied that  his  deeds,  and  the  titles  conferred  by  them,  were 
unknown, 

The  code  of  war  of  the  red  men  attests  the  freedom  of 
their  life.  No  war-chief  was  appointed  on  account  of  birth, 
but  was,  in  every  case,  elected  by  opinion ;  and  every  war- 
party  was  but  a  band  of  volunteers,  enlisted  for  one  special 
expedition,  and  for  no  more.  Any  one  who,  on  chanting 
the  war-song,  could  obtain  volunteer  followers,  became  a 
war-chief.  This  was  true  of  the  Algonkins,  and  true  of  the 
Natchez. 

Solemn  fasts  and  religious  rites  precede  the  departure  of 
the  warriors  ;  the  war-dance  must  be  danced,  and  the  war- 
song  sung.  They  express  in  their  melodies  a  contempt  of 
death,  a  passion  for  glory ;  and  the  chief  boasts  that  "  the 
spirits  on  high  shall  repeat  his  name."  A  belt  painted  red, 
or  a  bundle  of  bloody  sticks,  sent  to  the  enemy,  is  a  declara- 
tion of  defiance.  As  the  war-party  leave  the  village,  they 
address  the  women  in  a  farewell  hymn  :  "  Do  not  weep  for 
me,  loved  woman,  should  I  die  ;  weep  for  yourself  alone. 
I  go  to  revenge  our  relations  fallen  and  slain  :  our  foes  shall 
lie  like  them  ;  I  go  to  lay  them  low."  And,  with  the  pride 
which  ever  marks  the  barbarian,  each  one  adds :  "  If  any 
man  thinks  himself  a  great  warrior,  I  think  myself  the 
same." 

The  wars  of  the  red  men  were  terrible,  not  from  their 
numbers ;  for,  on  any  one  expedition,  they  rarely  exceeded 
forty  men ;  it  was  the  parties  of  six  or  seven  which  were 


Chap.  XXXVII.     POLITY  OF  THE  INDIANS.  431 

the  most  to  be  dreaded.  Skill  consisted  in  surprising  the 
hostile  braves.  They  follow  their  trail,  to  kill  them  when 
they  sleep ;  or  they  lie  in  ambush  near  a  village,  and  watch 
for  an  opportunity  of  suddenly  dashing  on  a  single  foeman, 
or,  it  may  be,  a  woman  and  her  children  ;  and,  with  three 
strokes  to  each,  the  scalps  of  the  victims  being  suddenly 
taken  off,  the  brave  flies  back  with  his  companions,  to  hang 
the  trophies  in  his  cabin,  to  go  from  village  to  village  in 
exulting  procession,  to  hear  orators  recount  his  deeds  to  the 
elders  and  the  chief  people,  and,  by  the  number  of  scalps 
taken  with  his  own  hand,  to  gain  the  high  war  titles  of 
honor.  War-parties  of  but  two  or  three  were  not  uncom- 
mon. Clad  in  skins,  with  a  supply  of  red  paint,  a  bow  and 
quiver  full  of  arrows,  they  would  roam  through  the  wide 
forest  as  a  bark  would  over  the  ocean  ;  for  days  and  weeks 
they  would  hang  on  the  skirts  of  their  enemy,  waiting  the 
moment  for  striking  a  blow.  From  the  heart  of  the  Five 
Nations,  two  young  warriors  would  thread  the  wilderness  of 
the  south  ;  would  go  through  the  glades  of  Pennsylvania,  the 
valleys  of  Western  Virginia,  and  steal  within  the  mountain 
fastnesses  of  the  Cherokees.  There  they  would  hide  them- 
selves in  the  clefts  of  rocks,  and  change  their  places  of  con- 
cealment, till,  provided  with  scalps  enough  to  astonish  their 
village,  they  would  bound  over  the  ledges,  and  hurry  home. 
It  was  the  danger  of  such  inroads  that,  in  time  of  war,  made 
every  English  family  on  the  frontier  insecure. 

The  Romans,  in  their  triumphal  processions,  exhibited 
captives  to  the  gaze  of  the  Roman  people ;  the  Indian  con- 
queror compels  them  to  run  the  gauntlet  through  the  chil- 
dren and  women  of  his  tribe.  To  inflict  blows  that  cannot 
be  returned  is  proof  of  full  success,  and  the  entire  humilia- 
tion of  the  enemy ;  it  is,  moreover,  an  experiment  of  cour- 
age and  patience.  Those  who  show  fortitude  are  applauded; 
the  coward  becomes  an  object  of  scorn. 

Fugitives  and  suppliants  were  often  incorporated  into  a 
victorious  tribe,  which  had  waged  an  unrelenting  warfare 
against  their  nation.  The  Creek  confederacy  was  recruited 
by  emigrants  from  friends  and  foes  ;  the  Iroquois  welcomed 
the  defeated  Hurons.     Sometimes  a  captive  was  saved,  to 


432  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVH. 

be  adopted  in  place  of  a  warrior  who  had  fallen.  In  that 
event,  the  allegiance,  and  as  it  were  the  identity,  of  the 
captive,  the  current  of  his  affections  and  his  duties,  became 
changed.  The  children  and  the  wife  whom  he  had  left  at 
home  are  to  be  blotted  from  his  memory :  he  is  to  be  the 
departed  chieftain,  resuscitated  and  brought  back  from  the 
dwelling-place  of  shadows,  to  cherish  those  whom  he  cher- 
ished ;  to  hate  those  whom  he  hated ;  to  rekindle  his  pas- 
sions ;  to  retaliate  his  wrongs ;  to  hunt  for  his  cabin ;  to 
light  for  his  clan.  And  the  foreigner  thus  adopted  is  es- 
teemed to  stand  in  the  same  relations  of  consanguinity,  and 
to  be  bound  by  the  same  restraints  in  regard  to  marriage. 

More  commonly,  it  was  the  captive's  lot  to  endure  tor- 
ments and  death,  in  the  forms  which  Brebeuf  has  described. 
On  the  way  to  the  cabins  of  his  conquerors,  the  hands  of  an 
Iroquois  prisoner  were  crushed  between  stones,  his  fingers 
torn  off  or  mutilated,  the  joints  of  his  arms  scorched  and 
gashed,  while  he  himself  preserved  his  tranquillity,  and  sang 
the  songs  of  his  nation.  Arriving  at  the  homes  of  his  con- 
querors, all  the  cabins  regaled  him ;  and  a  young  girl  was 
bestowed  on  him,  to  be  the  companion  of  his  captivity  and 
the  object  of  his  last  loves.  At  one  village  after  another, 
he  was  present  at  festivals  which  were  given  in  his  name, 
and  at  which  he  was  obliged  to  sing.  The  old  chief,  who 
might  have  adopted  him  in  place  of  a  fallen  nephew,  chose 
rather  to  gratify  revenge,  and  pronounced  the  doom  of 
death.  "  That  is  well,"  was  his  reply.  The  sister  of  the 
fallen  warrior,  into  whose  place  it  had  been  proposed  to 
receive  him,  still  treated  him  with  tenderness  as  a  brother, 
offering  him  food,  and  serving  him  with  interest  and  regard ; 
her  father  caressed  him  as  though  he  had  become  his  kins- 
man, gave  him  a  pipe,  and  wiped  the  thick  drops  of  sweat 
from  his  face.  His  last  entertainment,  made  at  the  charge 
of  the  bereaved  chief,  began  at  noon.  To  the  crowd  of  his 
guests  he  declared  :  "  My  brothers,  I  am  going  to  die ;  make 
merry  around  me  with  good  heart :  I  am  a  man ;  I  fear 
neither  death  nor  your  torments ; "  and  he  sang  aloud.  The 
feast  being  ended,  he  was  conducted  to  the  cabin  of  blood. 
They  place  him  on  a  mat,  and  bind  his  hands ;  he  rises,  and 


Chap.  XXX Vn.    RELIGION  OF  THE   INDIANS.  433 

dances  round  the  cabin,  chanting  his  death-song.  At  eight 
in  the  evening,  eleven  fires  which  had  been  kindled  are 
hedged  in  by  files  of  spectators.  The  young  men  selected 
to  be  the  actors  are  exhorted  to  do  well,  for  their  deeds 
would  be  grateful  to  Areskoui,  the  powerful  war-god.  A 
war-chief  strips  the  prisoner,  shows  him  naked  to  the  peo- 
ple, and  assigns  their  office  to  the  tormentors.  Then  ensued 
a  scene  the  most  horrible :  torments  lasted  till  after  sunrise, 
when  the  wretched  victim,  bruised,  gashed,  mutilated,  half- 
roasted,  and  scalped,  was  carried  out  of  the  village,  and 
hacked  in  pieces.  A  festival  upon  his  flesh  completed  the 
sacrifice.  Such  were  the  customs  that  Europeans  have 
displaced. 

The  solemn  execution  of  the  captive  seems  to  have  been, 
in  part  at  least,  an  act  of  faith  and  a  religious  sacrifice. 
The  dweller  in  the  wilderness  is  conscious  of  his  depen- 
dence ;  he  feels  the  existence  of  relations  with  the  universe 
by  which  he  is  surrounded  and  an  invisible  world ;  he  re- 
cognises a  nature  higher  than  his  own.  His  language,  which 
gave  liim  no  separate  word  for  causation,  could  give  him 
no  expression  for  a  first  cause ;  and,  since  he  had  no  idea 
of  existence  except  in  connection  with  space  and  time,  he 
could  have  no  idea  of  an  Infinite  and  Eternal  Being.  But, 
as  the  ideas  of  existence  and  causation  were  blended  with 
words  expressing  action  or  quality,  so  the  idea  of  divinity 
was  blended  with  nature,  and  yet  not  wholly  merged  in  the 
external  world.  So  complete  was  this  union,  many  travellers 
denied  that  they  had  any  religion.  "  As  to  the  knowledge 
of  God,"  says  Joutel,  of  the  south-west,  "it  did  not  seem 
to  us  that  they  had  any  definite  notion  about  it.  True,  we 
found  upon  our  route  some  who,  as  far  as  we  could  judge, 
believed  that  there  was  something  exalted,  which  is  above 
all ;  but  they  have  neither  temples,  nor  ceremonies,  nor 
prayers,  marking  a  divine  worship.  That  they  have  no  re- 
ligion, can  be  said  of  all  whom  we  saw."  "  The  northern 
nations,"  writes  Le  Caron,  "  recognise  no  divinity  from  mo- 
tives of  religion  ;  they  have  neither  sacrifice,  nor  temple,  nor 
priest,  nor  ceremony  of  worship."  Le  Jeunc  also  affirms : 
"  There  is  among  them  very  little  superstition  ;  they  think 
VOL.  II.  28 


434  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVII. 

only  of  living  and  of  revenge ;  they  are  not  attached  to  the 
worship  of  any  divinity."  And  yet  they  believed  that  some 
powerful  genius  had  created  the  world  ;  that  unknown  agen- 
cies had  made  the  heavens  above  them  and  the  earth  on 
which  they  dwelt.  The  god  of  the  savage  was  what  the 
metaphysician  endeavors  to  express  by  the  word  substance. 
The  red  man,  unaccustomed  to  generalization,  obtained  no 
conception  of  an  absolute  substance,  of  a  self-existent  being, 
but  saw  a  divinity  in  every  power.  Wherever  there  was 
being,  motion,  or  action,  there  to  him  was  a  spirit ;  and,  in 
a  special  manner,  wherever  there  appeared  singular  excel- 
lence among  beasts  or  birds,  or  in  the  creation,  there  to  him 
was  the  presence  of  a  divinity.  When  he  feels  his  pulse 
throb  or  his  heart  beat,  he  knows  that  it  is  a  spirit.  A  god 
resides  in  the  flint,  to  give  forth  the  kindling,  cheering  fire ; 
in  the  mountain  cliff ;  in  the  cool  recesses  of  the  grottoes 
which  nature  has  adorned;  in  each  "little  grass"  that 
springs  miraculously  from  the  earth.  "  The  woods,  the 
wilds,  and  the  waters  respond  to  savage  intelligence ;  the 
stars  and  the  mountains  live ;  the  river,  and  the  lake,  and 
the  waves  have  a  spirit."  Every  hidden  agency,  every 
mysterious  influence,  is  personified.  A  god  dwells  in  the 
sun,  and  in  the  moon,  and  in  the  firmament ;  the  spirit  of 
the  morning  reddens  in  the  eastern  sky ;  a  deity  is  present 
in  the  ocean  and  in  the  fire ;  the  crag  that  overhangs  the 
river  has  its  genius ;  there  is  a  spirit  to  the  waterfall ;  a 
household  god  makes  its  abode  in  the  Indian's  wigwam,  and 
consecrates  his  home ;  spirits  climb  upon  the  forehead,  to 
weigh  down  the  eyelids  in  sleep.  Not  the  heavenly  bodies 
only,  the  sky  is  filled  with  spirits  that  minister  to  man.  To 
the  savage,  divinity,  broken,  as  it  were,  into  an  infinite 
number  of  fragments,  fills  all  place  and  all  being.  The  idea 
of  unity  in  the  creation  may  have  existed  contemporane- 
ously; but  it  existed  only  in  the  germ,  or  as  a  vague  belief 
derived  from  the  harmony  of  the  universe.  Yet  faith  in 
the  Great  Spirit,  when  once  presented,  was  promptly  seized 
and  appropriated,  and  so  infused  itself  into  the  heart  of 
remotest  tribes  that  it  came  to  be  often  considered  as  a  por- 
tion of  their  original  faith.     Their  shadowy  aspirations  and 


Chap.  XXXVn.    RELIGION  OF  THE  INDIANS.  435 

creeds  assumed,  through  the  reports  of  missionaries,  a  more 
complete  development ;  and  a  religious  system  was  elicited 
from  the  pregnant  but  rude  materials. 

It  is  not  fear  which  generates  this  belief  in  the  existence 
of  higher  powers.  The  faith  attaches  to  every  thing,  but 
most  of  all  to  that  which  is  excellent ;  it  is  the  undefined 
consciousness  of  the  existence  of  inexplicable  relations  to- 
wards powers  of  which  the  savage  cannot  solve  the  origin 
or  analyze  the  nature.  His  gods  are  not  the  offspring  of 
terror;  universal  nature  seems  to  him  instinct  with  div- 
inity. The  Indian  venerates  what  excites  his  amazement  or 
interests  his  imagination.  "  The  Illinois,"  writes  the  Jesuit 
Marest,  "  adore  a  sort  of  genius,  which  they  call  manitou : 
to  them  it  is  the  master  of  life,  the  spirit  that  rules  all 
things.  A  bird,  a  buffalo,  a  bear,  a  feather,  a  skin,  —  that 
is  their  manitou." 

No  tribe  worshipped  its  prophets,  or  deified  its  heroes ; 
no  Indian  adored  his  fellow-man,  or  paid  homage  to  the 
dead.  He  turns  from  himself  to  the  inferior  world,  which 
he  believes  also  to  be  animated  by  spirits.  The  bird,  that 
mysteriously  cleaves  the  air,  into  which  he  cannot  soar  ;  the 
fish,  that  hides  itself  in  the  depths  of  the  clear,  cool  lakes, 
which  he  cannot  fathom  ;  the  beasts  of  the  forest,  whose 
unerring  instincts,  more  sure  than  his  own  intelligence, 
seem  like  revelations,  —  these  enshrine  the  deity  whom  he 
adores.  On  the  Ohio,  Mermet  questioned  a  medicine  man, 
who  venerated  the  buffalo  as  his  manitou.  He  confessed 
that  he  did  not  worship  the  buffalo,  but  the  invisible  spirit 
which  is  the  type  of  all  buffaloes.  "  Is  there  such  a  manitou 
to  the  bear?"  "Yes."  "To  man?"  "Nothing  more 
certain ;  man  is  superior  to  all."  "  Why  do  you  not,  then, 
invoke  the  manitou  of  man?"  And  the  juggler  knew  not 
what  to  answer.  It  has  been  said  by  speculative  philosophy 
that  no  Indian  ever  chose  the  manitou  of  a  man  for  his 
object  of  adoration,  because  he  adored  only  the  unknown, 
and  man  is  the  being  most  intimately  known  to  him.  It 
seems  that  the  very  instinct  which  prompted  the  savage  to 
adore  was  an  instinct  which  prompted  him  to  recognise  his 
closer  connection  with  the  world.     To  have  worshipped  the 


436 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVIL 


manitou  of  a  man  would  have  been  to  put  himself  only  in 
nearer  relations  with  his  own  kind ;  the  gulf  between  him 
and  the  universe  would  have  remained  as  wide  as  ever. 
The  instincts  towards  man  led  to  marriage,  society,  and 
political  institutions.  The  sentiment  of  devotion  sought  to 
pass  beyond  the  region  of  humanity,  and  enter  into  intimate 
communion  with  nature  and  the  beings  to  whom  imagina- 
tion intrusted  its  control,  —  with  the  sun  and  moon,  the 
forests,  the  rivers,  the  lakes,  the  fishes,  the  birds,  —  all 
which  has  an  existence  independent  of  man,  and  manifests  a 
power  which  he  can  neither  create  nor  destroy. 

Nor  did  the  savage  distrust  his  imaginations.  Something 
within  him  affirmed  with  authority  that  there  was  more  in 
them  than  fancies  which  he  had  called  into  being.  Infi- 
delity never  clouded  his  mind ;  the  shadows  of  skepticism 
never  darkened  his  faith. 

The  piety  of  the  savage  was  not  merely  a  sentiment  of 
passive  resignation :  he  strove  to  propitiate  the  unknown, 
to  avert  their  wrath,  to  secure  their  favor.  If,  at  first,  no 
traces  of  religious  feeling  were  discerned,  closer  observation 
showed  that,  everywhere  among  the  red  men,  even  among 
the  roving  tribes  of  the  north,  they  had  some  kind  of  sacri- 
fice and  of  prayer.  If  the  harvest  was  abundant,  if  the 
chase  was  successful,  they  saw  in  their  success  the  influence 
of  a  manitou;  and  they  would  ascribe  even  an  ordinary 
accident  to  the  wrath  of  the  god.  "  O  manitou !  '^  exclaimed 
an  Indian,  at  daybreak,  with  his  family  about  him,  lament- 
ing the  loss  of  a  child,  "  thou  art  angry  with  me ;  turn  thine 
anger  from  me,  and  spare  the  rest  of  my  children."  Canon- 
icus,  the  great  sachem  of  the  Narragansetts,  when  bent  with 
age,  having  buried  his  son,  "  burned  his  own  dwelling,  and 
all  his  goods  in  it,  in  part  as  a  humble  expiation  to  the  god 
who,  as  they  believe,  had  taken  his  sonne  from  him."  At 
their  feasts,  they  were  careful  not  to  profane  the  bones  of 
the  elk,  the  beaver,  and  other  game,  lest  the  spirits  of  these 
animals  should  pass  by  and  behold  the  indignity ;  and  then 
the  living  of  the  same  species,  instructed  of  the  outrage, 
would  ever  after  be  careful  to  escape  the  toils  and  the 
arrows  of  the  hunter.     There  were  also  occasions  on  which 


I 


Chap.  XXXVII.    RELIGION   OF  THE  INDIANS.  437 

nothing  of  the  flesh  was  carried  forth  out  of  the  wigwam, 
though  a  part  might  be  burnt  as  food  for  the  dead,  and 
when,  of  the  beasts  which  were  consumed,  it  was  the  sacred 
rule  that  not  a  bone  should  be  broken.  On  their  expedi- 
tions, they  keep  no  watch  during  the  night,  but  pray- 
earnestly  to  their  fetiches ;  and  the  band  of  warriors  sleep 
securely  under  the  safeguard  of  the  sentinels  whom  they 
have  invoked.  They  throw  tobacco  into  the  fire,  on  the 
lake  or  the  rapids,  into  the  crevices  in  the  rocks,  on  the  war- 
path, to  secure  the  good-will  of  the  genius  of  the  place. 
The  evil  that  is  in  the  world  they  also  ascribe  to  spirits,  that 
are  the  dreaded  authors  of  their  woes.  The  demon  of  war 
was  to  be  propitiated  only  by  acts  of  cruelty ;  yet  they  never 
sacrificed  their  own  children  or  their  own  friends.  The  Iro- 
quois, when  Jogues  was  among  them,  sacrificed  an  Algonkin 
woman  in  honor  of  Areskoui,  their  war-god,  exclaiming: 
"  Areskoui,  to  thee  we  burn  this  victim  ;  feast  on  her  flesh, 
and  grant  us  new  victories ; "  and  her  flesh  was  eaten  as  a 
religious  rite.  Hennepin  found  a  beaver  robe  hung  on  an 
oak,  as  an  oblation  to  the  spirit  that  dwells  in  the  Falls  of 
St.  Anthony.  The  guides  of  Joutel  in  the  south-west,  on 
killing  a  buffalo,  offered  several  slices  of  the  meat  as  a 
sacrifice  to  the  unknown  spirit  of  that  wilderness.  As  they 
passed  the  Ohio,  the  favor  of  its  beautiful  stream  was  sought 
by  gifts  of  tobacco  and  dried  meat ;  and  worship  was  paid  to 
the  rock  just  above  the  Missouri. 

Even  now,  in  the  remote  west,  evidence  may  be  found  of 
the  same  homage  to  the  higher  natures,  which  the  savage 
divines,  but  cannot  fathom.  Nor  did  he  seek  to  win  their 
favor  by  gifts  alone ;  he  made  a  sacrifice  of  his  pleasures ; 
he  chastened  his  passions.  To  calm  the  rising  wind,  when 
the  morning  sky  was  red,  he  would  repress  his  activity,  and 
give  up  the  business  of  the  day.  To  secure  success  in  the 
chase,  by  appeasing  the  tutelary  spirits  of  the  animals  to  be 
pursued,  severe  fasts  w^e  kept ;  and  happy  was  he  to  whom 
they  appeared  in  his  dreams,  for  it  was  a  sure  augury  of 
abundant  returns.  The  warrior,  preparing  for  an  expedi- 
tion, often  sought  the  favor  of  the  god  of  battle  by  sepa^ 
rating  himself  from  woman,  and   mortifying  the  body  by 


k^ 


438  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVIL 

continued  penance.  The  security  of  female  captives  was, 
in  part,  the  consequence  of  the  vows  of  chastity,  by  which 
he  was  bound  till  after  his  return.  Detesting  restraint,  he 
was  perpetually  imposing  upon  himself  extreme  hardships, 
that  by  penance  and  suffering  he  might  atone  for  his  of- 
fences, and  by  acts  of  self-denial  might  win  for  himself  the 
powerful  favor  of  the  invisible  world. 

Nor  is  he  satisfied  with  paying  homage  to  the  several 
powers  whose  aid  he  may  invoke  in  war,  in  the  chase, 
or  on  the  river;  he  seeks  a  special  genius  to  be  his  com- 
panion and  tutelary  angel  through  life.  On  approaching 
maturity,  the  young  Chippewa,  anxious  to  behold  God, 
blackens  his  face  with  charcoal,  and  building  a  lodge  of 
cedar-boughs,  it  may  be  on  the  summit  of  a  hill,  there 
begins  his  fast  in  solitude.  The  fast  endures,  perhaps,  ten 
days,  sometimes  even  without  water,  till,  excited  by  the 
severest  irritation  of  thirst,  watchfulness,  and  famine,  he 
beholds  a  vision  of  God,  and  knows  it  to  be  his  guardian 
spirit.  That  spirit  may  assume  fantastic  forms,  as  a  skin  or 
a  feather,  as  a  smooth  pebble  or  a  shell ;  but  the  fetich, 
when  obtained,  and  carried  by  the  warrior  in  his  pouch,  is 
not  the  guardian  angel  himself,  but  rather  the  token  of  his 
favor,  and  the  pledge  of  his  presence  in  time  of  need.  A 
similar  probation  was  appointed  for  the  warriors  of  Vir- 
ginia, and  traces  of  it  are  discerned  beyond  the  Mississippi. 
That  man  should  take  up  the  cross,  that  sin  should  be 
atoned  for,  are  ideas  that  dwell  in  human  nature ;  they 
were  so  diffused  among  the  savages,  that  Le  Clercq  believed 
some  of  the  apostles  must  have  reached  the  American 
continent. 

The  gifts  to  the  deities  were  made  by  the  chiefs,  or  by 
any  one  of  the  tribe  for  himself.  In  this  sense,  each  Indian 
was  his  own  priest ;  the  right  of  offering  sacrifices  was  not 
reserved  to  a  class ;  any  one  could  do  it  for  himself,  whether 
the  sacrifice  consisted  in  oblations  of  acts  of  self-denial.  But 
the  red  man  had  a  consciousness  of  man's  superiority  to  the 
powers  of  nature,  and  sorcerers  sprung  up  in  every  part  of 
the  wilderness.  They  were  prophets  whose  prayers  would 
be  heard.     "  They  are  no  other,"  said  the  Virginian  Whit- 


Chap.  XXXVII.    RELIGION  OF  THE  INDIANS.  439 

aker,  "but  such  as  our  English  witches;"  and,  as  their 
agency  was  most  active  in  healing  disease,  they  are  now 
usually  called  medicine  men. 

Here,  too,  the  liberty  of  the  desert  appears.  As  the  war- 
chief  was  elected  by  opinion,  and  served  voluntarily,  so  the 
medicine  men  were  self-appointed.  They  professed  an  in- 
sight into  the  laws  of  nature,  and  power  over  those  laws; 
but  belief  was  free  ;  there  was  no  monopoly  of  science,  no 
close  priesthood.  He  who  could  inspire  confidence  might 
come  forward  as  a  medicine  man.  The  savage  puts  his 
faith  in  auguries  ;  he  casts  lots,  and  believes  nature  will  be 
obedient  to  the  decision,  he  puts  his  trust  in  the  sagacity  of 
the  sorcerer,  who  comes  forth  from  a  heated,  pent-up  lodge, 
and,  with  all  the  convulsions  of  enthusiasm,  utters  a  con- 
fused medley  of  sounds  as  oracles. 

The  medicine  man  boasts  of  his  power  over  the  elements ; 
he  can  call  water  from  above,  and  beneath,  and  around  ;  he 
can  foretell  a  drought,  or  bring  rain,  or  guide  the  lightning ; 
by  his  spells,  he  can  give  attraction  and  good  fortune  to  the 
arrow  or  the  net ;  he  conjures  the  fish,  that  dwell  in  the 
lakes  or  haunt  the  rivers,  to  suffer  themselves  to  be  caught ; 
he  can  pronounce  spells  which  will  infallibly  give  success 
in  the  chase,  which  will  compel  the  beaver  to  rise  up  from 
beneath  the  water,  and  overcome  the  shyness  and  cunning 
of  the  moose  ;  he  can,  by  his  incantations,  draw  the  heart 
of  woman ;  he  can  give  to  the  warrior  vigilance  like  the 
rising  sun,  and  power  to  walk  over  the  earth  and  through 
the  sky  victoriously.  If  an  evil  spirit  has  introduced  dis- 
ease into  the  frame  of  a  victim,  the  medicine  man  can  put 
it  to  flight;  and,  should  his  remedies  chance  to  heal,  he 
exclaims:  "Who  can  resist  my  spirit?  Is  he  not,  indeed, 
the  master  of  life  ? "  Or  disease,  it  was  believed,  might 
spring  from  a  want  of  harmony  with  the  outward  world. 
If  some  innate  desire  has  failed  to  be  gratified,  life  can  be 
saved  only  by  the  discovery  and  gratification  of  that  secret 
longing  of  the  soul ;  and  the  medicine  man  reveals  the 
momentous  secret.  "Were  he  to  assert  that  the  manitou  or- 
ders the  sick  man  to  wallow  naked  in  the  snow,  or  to  scorch 
himself  with  fire,  he  would  do  it.     But  let  not  the  wisdom 


440  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVH. 

of  civilization  wholly  deride  the  savage  :  the  same  supersti- 
tion long  lingered  in  the  cities  and  palaces  of  Europe ;  and, 
in  the  century  after  the  Huron  missions  began,  the  English 
moralist  Johnson  was  carried,  in  his  infancy,  to  the  British 
sovereign,  to  be  cured  of  scrofula  by  the  great  medicine  of 
her  touch. 

Little  reverence  was  attached  to  time  or  place.  It  could 
not  be  perceived  that  the  savages  had  any  set  holidays ; 
only  in  times  of  triumph,  at  burials,  at  harvests,  the  nation 
assembled  for  solemn  rites.  Each  Choctaw  town  had  a 
house  in  which  the  bones  of  the  dead  were  deposited  for  a 
season  previous  to  their  final  burial.  The  Natchez,  like 
their  kindred  the  Taensas,  kept  a  perpetual  fire  in  a  rude 
cabin,  in  which  the  bones  of  their  great  chiefs  were  said 
to  be  preserved.  The  honest  Charlevoix,  who  entered  it, 
writes :  "  I  saw  no  ornaments,  absolutely  nothing,  which 
could  make  me  know  that  I  was  in  a  temple ; "  and,  refer- 
ring to  the  minute  relations  which  others  had  fabricated  of 
an  altar,  and  a  dome,  of  cones  wrapped  in  skins,  and  the 
circle  of  the  bodies  of  departed  chiefs,  he  adds :  "  I  saw 
nothing  of  all  that ;  if  things  were  so  formerly,  they  must 
have  changed  greatly."  And  Adair  confidently  insinuates 
that  the  Koran  does  not  more  widely  differ  from  the  Gos- 
pels, than  the  romances  respecting  the  Natchez  from  the 
truth.  The  building  was  probably  a  charnel-house,  not  a 
place  of  worship.  No  tribes  whatever,  east  of  the  Missis- 
sippi, or  certainly  none  except  those  of  the  Natchez  family, 
had  a  consecrated  spot,  or  a  temple,  where  there  was  be- 
lieved to  be  a  nearer  communication  between  this  world 
and  that  which  is  unseen. 

Dreams  are  to  the  wild  man  the  avenue  to  the  invisible 
world ;  he  reveres  them  as  divine  revelations,  and  believes 
he  shall  die  unless  they  are  carried  into  effect.  The  capri- 
cious visions  in  a  feverish  sleep  are  obeyed  by  the  village  or 
the  tribe  ;  the  whole  nation  would  contribute  its  harvest,  its 
costly  furs,  its  belts  of  beads,  the  produce  of  its  chase, 
rather  than  fail  in  their  fulfilment ;  the  dream  must  be 
obeyed,  even  if  it  required  the  surrender  of  women  to  a 
public  embrace.     The  faith  in  the  spiritual  world,  as  re- 


Chap.  XXXVII.     RELIGION  OF  THE  INDIANS. 


441 


vealed  by  dreams,  was  universal.  On  Lake  Superior,  the 
nephew  of  a  Chippewa  squaw  having  dreamed  that  he  saw 
a  French  dog,  the  woman  travelled  four  hundred  leagues, 
in  midwinter,  over  ice  and  through  snows,  to  obtain  it. 
Life  itself  was  hazarded,  rather  than  fail  to  listen  to  the 
message  conveyed  through  sleep;  and,  if  it  could  not  be 
fulfilled,  at  least  some  semblance  would  be  made.  Happy 
was  the  hunter  who,  as  he  went  forth  to  the  chase,  obtained 
a  vision  of  the  great  spirit  of  the  animal  which  he  was  to 
pursue;  the  sight  was  a  warrant  of  success.  But,  if  the 
dream  should  be  threatening,  the  savage  would  rise  in  the 
night  or  prevent  the  dawn  with  prayer ;  or  he  would  call 
around  him  his  friends  and  neighbors,  and  himself  keep 
waking  and  fasting,  with  invocations,  for  many  days  and 
nights. 

The  Indian  invoked  the  friendship  of  spirits,  and  sought 
the  mediation  of  medicine  men  ;  but  he  never  would  confess 
his  fear  of  death.  To  him  intelligence  was  something  more 
than  a  transitory  accident ;  and  he  was  unable  to  conceive 
of  a  cessation  of  life.  His  faith  in  immortality  was  like 
that  of  the  child,  who  weeps  over  the  dead  body  of  its 
mother,  and  believes  that  she  yet  lives.  At  the  bottom  of 
an  open  grave,  the  melting  snows  had  left  a  little  water ; 
and  the  sight  of  it  chilled  and  saddened  his  imagination. 
"  You  have  had  no  compassion  for  my  poor  brother  : "  such 
was  the  reproach  of  an  Algonkin ;  "  the  air  is  pleasant  and 
the  sun  cheering,  and  yet  you  do  not  remove  the  snow  from 
his  grave  to  warm  him  a  little ; "  and  he  knew  no  content- 
ment till  this  was  done. 

The  same  m6ti\e  prompted  them  to  bury  with  the  war- 
rior his  pipe  and  his  manitou,  his  tomahawk,  quiver,  and 
bow  ready  bent  for  action,  and  his  most  splendid  apparel ; 
to  place  by  his  side  his  bowl,  his  maize,  and  his  venison, 
for  the  long  journey  to  the  country  of  his  ancestors.  Fes- 
tivals in  honor  of  the  dead  were  also  frequent,  when  a 
part  of  the  food  was  given  to  the  flames,  that  so  it  might 
serve  to  nourish  the  departed.  The  traveller  would  find 
in  the  forests  a  dead  body  placed  on  a  scaffold  erected 
upon  piles,  carefully  wrapped  in  bark  for  its  shroud,  and 


442 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVIL 


attired  in  warmest  furs.  If  a  mother  lost  her  babe,  she 
would  cover  it  with  bark,  and  envelop  it  anxiously  in  the 
softest  beaver-skins ;  at  the  burial-place,  she  would  put  by- 
its  side  its  cradle,  its  beads,  and  its  rattles  ;  and,  as  a  last 
service  of  maternal  love,  would  draw  milk  from  her  bosom 
in  a  cup  of  bark,  and  burn  it  in  the  fire,  that  her  infant 
might  still  find  nourishment  on  its  solitary  journey  to  the 
land  of  shades.  Yet  the  new-born  babe  would  be  buried, 
not,  as  usual,  on  a  scaffold,  but  by  the  wayside,  that  so  its 
spirit  might  secretly  steal  into  the  bosom  of  some  passing 
matron,  and  be  born  again  under  happier  auspices.  On 
burying  her  daughter,  the  Chippewa  mother  adds  not  snow- 
shoes  and  beads  and  moccasons  only,  but  —  sad  emblem  of 
woman's  lot  in  the  wilderness  !  —  the  carrying-belt  and  the 
paddle.  "  I  know  my  daughter  will  be  restored  to  me,"  she 
once  said,  as  she  clipped  a  lock  of  hair  as  a  memorial ;  "  by 
this  lock  of  hair  I  shall  discover  her,  for  I  shall  take  it  with 
me ; "  alluding  to  the  day  when  she,  too,  with  her  carrying- 
belt  and  paddle,  and  the  relic  of  her  child,  should  pass 
through  the  grave  to  the  dwelling-place  of  her  ancestors. 

It  was  believed  even  that  living  men  had  visited  the 
remote  region  where  the  shadows. have  their  home;  and 
that  once,  like  Orpheus  of  old,  a  brother,  wandering  in 
search  of  a  cherished  sister,  but  for  untimely  curiosity, 
would  have  drawn  her  from  the  society  of  the  dead,  and 
restored  her  to  the  cabin  of  her  fathers.  In  the  flashes 
of  the  northern  lights,  men  believed  they  saw  the  dance 
of  the  dead.  But  the  south-west  is  the  great  subject  of 
traditions.  There  is  the  court  of  the  Great  God ;  there 
is  the  paradise  where  beans  and  maize  grow  spontaneously; 
there  are  the  shades  of  the  forefathers  of  the  red  men. 

This  form  of  faith  in  immortality  had  also  its  crimes. 
It  is  related  that  the  chief  within  whose  territory  De  Soto 
died  selected  two  young  and  well-proportioned  Indians 
to  be  put  to  death,  saying  the  usage  of  the  country  was, 
when  any  lord  died,  to  kill  Indians  to  wait  on  him  and 
serve  him  by  the  way.  Traces  of  an  analogous  supersti- 
tion may  be  found  among  Algonkin  tribes  and  among  the 
Sioux;   the  Winnebagoes  are  said  to  have   observed   the 


CHAP.XXXVn.    RELIGION  OF  THE  INDIANS.  443 

usage  within  the  memory  of  persons  now  living ;  it  is  af- 
firmed of  the  Natchez,  and  doubtless  with  truth,  though 
the  details  of  the  sacrifice  are  described  with  wild  exag- 
geration. Even  now,  the  Dakotas  will  slay  horses  on  the 
grave  of  a  warrior :  news  has  come  from  the  Great  Spirit 
that  the  departed  chief  is  still  borne  by  them  in  the  land 
of  shades ;  and  the  spirits  of  the  mighty  dead  have  some- 
times been  seen,  as  they  ride,  in  the  night-time,  through 
the  sky. 

The  savage  believed  that  to  every  man  there  is  an  ap- 
pointed time  to  die  ;  to  anticipate  that  period  by  suicide 
was  detested  as  the  meanest  cowardice.  For  the  dead  he 
abounds  in  his  lamentations,  mingling  them  with  words 
of  comfort  to  the  living :  to  him,  death  is  the  king  of  ter- 
rors. He  never  names  the  name  of  the  departed ;  to  do 
so  is  an  offence  justifying  revenge.  To  speak  generally 
of  brothers  to  one  who  has  lost  her  own  would  be  an  injury, 
for  it  would  nlake  her  weep  because  her  brothers  are  no 
more ;  and  to  orphans  the  missionary  could  not  discourse 
of  the  Father  of  man  without  kindling  indignation.  And 
yet  they  summon  energy  to  announce  their  own  approach- 
ing death  with  tranquillity.  "  Full  happy  am  I,"  sings 
the  warrior,  "full  happy  am  I  to  be  slain  within  the  limits 
of  the  land  of  the  enemy ! "  While  yet  alive,  the  dying 
chief  sometimes  arrayed  himself  in  the  garments  in  which 
he  was  to  be  buried,  and,  giving  a  farewell  festival,  calmly 
chanted  his  last  song,  or  made  a  last  harangue,  glorying 
in  the  remembrance  of  his  deeds,  and  commending  to  his 
friends  the  care  of  those  whom  he  loved ;  and,  when  he 
had  given  up  the  ghost,  he  was  placed  by  his  wigwam  in  a 
sitting  posture,  as  if  to  show  that,  though  life  was  spent, 
the  principle  of  being  was  not  gone;  and  in  that  posture 
he  was  buried.  Everywhere  in  America  this  posture  was 
adopted  at  burials.  From  Canada  to  Patagonia,  it  was  the 
usage  of  every  nation;  an  evidence  that  some  common 
sympathy  pervaded  the  continent,  and  struck  a  chord  which 
vibrated  through  the  heart  of  a  race.  The  narrow  house, 
within  which  the  warrior  sat,  was  often  hedged  round 
with  a  light  palisade ;  and  for  six  months  the  women  would 


444 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVIL 


repair  to  it  thrice  a  day   to  weep.     He  that  should  despoil 
the  dead  was  accursed. 

The  faith  as  well  as  the  sympathies  of  the  savage  de- 
scended also  to  inferior  beings.  Of  each  kind  of  animals 
they  say  there  exists  one  standard  example,  of  a  vast  size, 
the  original  of  the  whole  class.  From  the  immense  invisi- 
ble beaver  come  all  the  beavers,  by  whatever  run  of  water 
they  are  found ;  the  same  is  true  of  the  elk  and  buffalo,  of 
the  eagle  and  the  robin,  of  the  meanest  quadruped  of  the 
forest,  of  the  smallest  insect  that  buzzes  in  the  air.  For 
each  class  there  lives  this  invisible  type,  or  elder  brother. 
Thus  the  savage  established  his  right  to  be  ranked  by  phil- 
osophers among  realists ;  and  his  chief  effort  at  generaliza- 
tion was  a  reverent  exercise  of  the  religious  sentiment. 
Where  these  elder  brothers  dwell  they  do  not  exactly 
know;  yet  it  may  be  that  the  giant  manitous,  which  are 
brothers  to  beasts,  are  hid  beneath  the  waters,  and  that 
those  of  the  birds  make  their  homes  in  the  blue  sky.  The 
Indian  was  moreover  persuaded  that  each  individual  animal 
possesses  the  mysterious,  indestructible  principle  of  life : 
there  is  not  a  breathing  thing  but  has  its  shade,  which  never 
can  perish.  Regarding  himself,  in  comparison  with  other 
animals,  but  as  the  first  among  co-ordinate  existences,  he 
respects  the  brute  creation,  and  assigns  to  it,  as  to  himself, 
a  perpetuity  of  being.  "  The  ancients  of  these  lands " 
believed  that  the  warrior,  when  released  from  life,  renews 
the  passions  and  activity  of  this  world ;  is  seated  once  more 
among  his  friends ;  shares  again  the  joyous  feast ;  walks 
through  shadowy  forests,  that  are  alive  with  the  spirits  of 
birds ;  and  there, 

By  midnight  moons,  o'er  moistening  dews, 
In  vestments  for  the  chase  arrayed, 

The  hunter  still  the  deer  pursues. 
The  hunter  and  the  deer  a  shade. 
The  Indian  would  not  give  up  the  prospect  of  his  own 
hereafter.  "  We  raise  not  our  thoughts,"  they  would  say  to 
the  missionaries,  "  to  your  heaven ;  we  desire  only  the  para- 
dise of  our  ancestors."  To  the  doctrine  of  a  future  life 
they  listened  readily.     The  idea  of  retribution,  as  far  as  it 


Chap.  XXXVn.    RELIGION  OF  THE  INDIANS.  445 

has  found  its  way  among  them,  was  derived  from  Europeans. 
The  future  life  was  to  the  Indian,  like  the  present,  a  free 
gift ;  some,  it  was  indeed  believed,  from  feebleness  or  age, 
did  not  reach  the  paradise  of  shades ;  but  no  red  man  was 
so  proud  as  to  believe  that  its  portals  were  opened  to  him 
by  his  own  good  deeds. 

Their  notion  of  immortality  was,  as  we  have  seen,  a  faith 
in  the  continuance  of  life ;  they  did  not  expect  a  general 
resurrection ;  nor  could  they  be  induced,  in  any  way,  to  be- 
lieve that  the  body  will  be  raised  up.  Yet  no  nations  paid 
greater  regard  to  the  remains  of  their  ancestors.  Every- 
where among  the  Choctaws  and  the  Wyandots,  Cherokees 
and  Algonkins,  they  were  carefully  wrapped  in  choicest 
furs,  and  preserved  with  affectionate  veneration.  Once 
every  few  years,  tlui  Hurons  collected  from  their  scattered 
cemeteries  the  bones  of  their  dead,  and,  in  the  midst  of 
great  solemnities,  cleansed  them  from  every  remainder  of 
flesh,  and  deposited  them  in  one  common  grave :  these  are 
their  holy  relics.  Other  nations  possess,  in  letters  and  the 
arts,  enduring  monuments  of  their  ancestors ;  the  savage 
red  men,  who  can  point  to  no  obelisk  or  column,  whose 
rude  implements  of  agriculture  could  not  even  raise  a  furrow 
on  the  surface  of  the  earth,  excel  all  races  in  veneration  for 
the  dead.  The  grave  is  their  only  monument,  the  bones  of 
their  fathers  the  only  pledges  of  their  history. 


446  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVm. 


CHAPTER    XXXVIII. 

THE    ABORIGINES,    THEIR   NATURE    AND    ORIGIN. 

A  DEEP  interest  belongs  to  the  question  of  the  natural 
relation  of  the  aborigines  of  America  to  those  before  whom 
they  have  fled.  "  We  are  men,"  said  the  Illinois  to  Mar- 
quette. After  illustrating  the  weaknesses  of  the  Wyandots, 
Brebeuf  adds  :  "They  are  men."  The  natives  of  America 
were  men  and  women  of  like  endowments  with  their  more 
cultivated  conquerors;  they  have  the  s^me  affections,  and 
the  same  powers ;  are  chilled  with  an  ague,  and  burn  with  a 
fever.  We  may  call  them  savage,  just  as  we  call  fruits 
wild;  natural  right  governs  them.  They  revere  unseen 
powers ;  they  respect  the  nuptial  ties ;  they  are  careful  of 
their  dead  :  their  religion,  their  marriages,  and  their  burials 
show  them  possessed  of  the  habits  of  humanity,  and  bound 
by  a  federative  compact  to  the  race.  They  had  the  moral 
faculty  which  can  recognize  the  distinction  between  right 
and  wrong;  nor  did  their  judgments  of  relations  bend  to 
their  habits  and  passions  more  decidedly  than  those  of  the 
nations  whose  laws  justified,  whose  statesmen  applauded, 
whose  sovereigns  personally  shared,  the  invasion  of  a  con- 
tinent to  steal  its  sons.  If  they  readily  yielded  to  the 
impetuosity  of  selfishness,  they  never  made  their  own  per- 
sonality the  centre  of  the  universe.  They  were  faithless 
treaty-breakers;  but,  at  least,  they  did  not  exalt  falsehood 
into  the  dignity  of  a  political  science,  or  scoff  at  the  su- 
premacy of  justice  as  the  delusive  hope  of  fools  ;  and,  if 
they  made  every  thing  yield  to  self-preservation,  they  never 
avowed  their  interest  to  be  the  first  law  of  international 
policy.  They  had  never  risen  to  the  conceptions  of  a 
spiritual  religion;  but,  as  between  the  French  and  the  na- 
tives, the  latter  —  such  is  the  assertion  of  St.  Mary  of  the 
Incarnation  —  had  even  a  greater   tendency  to   devotion. 


Chap.  XXXVm.     NATURE  OF  THE  INDIANS.  447 

Under  the  instructions  of  the  Jesuits,  they  learned  to  swing 
censers  and  to  chant  aves.  Gathering  round  Eliot,  in  Mas- 
sachusetts, the  tawny  choir  sang  the  psalms  of  David,  in 
Indian,  "to  one  of  the  ordinary  English  tunes,  melodi- 
ously ; "  and,  in  the  school  of  Brainerd,  thirty  Lenape  boys 
could  answer  all  the  questions  in  the  Westminster  Assem- 
bly's Catechism.  There  were  examples  among  them  of  men 
who,  under  the  guidance  of  missionaries,  became  anxious  for 
their  salvation,  having  faith  enough  for  despair,  if  not  for 
conversion ;  of  the  submission  of  warriors  to  the  penance 
imposed  by  the  Roman  church ;  and  the  sanctity  of  a  Mo- 
hawk maiden,  —  the  American  Geneveva,  —  who  preserved 
her  vows  of  chastity,  is  celebrated  in  the  early  histories  of 
New  France.  They  recognised  the  connection  between 
the  principles  of  Christian  morals  and  faint  intuitions  of 
their  own ;  and,  even  in  the  doctrine  of  the  divine  unity, 
they  seemed  to  find  not  so  much  a  novelty  as  the  revival  of 
a  slumbering  reminiscence.  They  were  not  good  arithme- 
ticians ;  their  tales  of  the  number  of  their  years,  or  of  the 
warriors  in  their  clans,  are  little  to  be  relied  on ;  and  yet 
everywhere  they  counted  like  Leibnitz  and  Laplace,  and, 
from  the  influence  of  some  law  that  pervades  humanity, 
they  began  to  repeat  at  ten.  They  could  not  dance  like 
those  trained  to  attitudes  of  grace ;  they  could  not  sketch 
light  ornaments  like  Raphael ;  yet,  under  every  sky,  they 
delighted  in  a  rhythmic  repetition  of  forms  and  sounds, 
would  move  in  cadence  to  wild  melodies,  and,  with  elegance 
and  imitative  power,  they  would  tattoo  their  skins  with 
harmonious  arabesques.  We  call  them  cruel ;  yet  they 
never  invented  the  thumb-screw,  or  the  boot,  or  the  rack, 
or  broke  on  the  wheel,  or  exiled  bands  of  their  nations  for 
opinion's  sake ;  and  never  protected  the  monopoly  of  a 
medicine  man  by  the  gallows  or  the  block,  or  by  fire. 
There  is  not  a  quality  belonging  to  the  white  man,  which 
did  not  also  belong  to  the  American  savage;  there  is  not 
among  the  aborigines  a  rule  of  language,  a  custom,  or  an 
institution,  which,  when  considered  in  its  principle,  has  not 
a  counterpart  among  their  conquerors.  The  unity  of  the 
human   race   is   established   by  the   exact  correspondence 


448  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVIIL 

between  their  respective  powers  ;  the  Indian  has  not  one 
more,  has  not  one  less,  than  the  white  man ;  the  map  of  the 
faculties  is  for  both  identical. 

When,  from  the  general  characteristics  of  humanity,  we 
come  to  the  comparison  of  powers,  the  existence  of  degrees 
immediately  appears.  The  red  man  has  aptitude  at  imita- 
tion rather  than  invention ;  he  learns  easily ;  his  natural 
logic  is  correct  and  discriminating,  and  he  seizes  on  the 
nicest  distinctions  in  comparing  objects.  But  he  is  deficient 
in  the  power  of  imagination  to  combine  and  bring  unity  into 
his  floating  fancies,  and  in  the  faculty  of  abstraction  to  lift 
himself  out  of  the  dominion  of  his  immediate  experience. 
He  is  neai'ly  destitute  of  abstract  moral  truth,  of  general 
principles ;  and,  as  a  consequence,  equalling  the  white  man 
in  the  sagacity  of  the  senses,  and  in  judgments  resting  on 
them,  he  is  inferior  in  reason  and  the  moral  qualities.  Nor 
is  this  inferiority  simply  attached  to  the  individual :  it  is 
connected  with  organization,  and  is  the  characteristic  of  the 
race. 

This  is  the  inference  from  history.  Benevolence  has, 
everywhere  in  our  land,  exerted  itself  to  ameliorate  the 
condition  of  the  Indian ;  above  all,  to  educate  the  young. 
Jesuit,  Franciscan,  and  Puritan,  the  church  of  England,  the 
Moravian,  the  benevolent  founders  of  schools,  academies, 
and  colleges,  all  have  endeavored  to  change  the  habits  of 
the  rising  generation  among  the  Indians ;  and  the  results, 
in  every  instance,  varying  in  the  degree  of  influence  ex* 
erted  by  the  missionary,  have  varied  in  little  else.  Woman, 
too,  with  her  gentleness,  and  the  winning  enthusiasm  of  her 
self-sacrificing  benevolence,  has  attempted  their  instruction, 
and  has  attempted  it  in  vain.  St.  Mary  of  the  Incarnation 
succeeded  as  little  as  Jonathan  Edwards  or  Brainerd.  The 
Jesuit  Stephen  de  Carheil,  revered  for  his  genius  as  well  as 
for  his  zeal,  was  for  more  than  sixty  years,  in  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries,  a  missionary  among  the  Huron- 
Iroquois  tribes ;  he  spoke  their  dialects  with  as  much  facility 
and  elegance  as  though  they  had  been  his  mother  tongue ; 
yet  the  fruits  of  his  diligence  were  inconsiderable.  Neither 
John  Eliot  nor  Roger  Williams  was  able  to  change  essen- 


Chap.  XXXVIII.      NATURE   OF  THE   INDIANS.  449 

tially  the  habits  and  character  of  the  New  England  tribes. 
The  Quakers  came  among  the  Delawares  in  the  spirit  of 
peace  and  brotherly  love,  and  with  sincerest  wishes  to 
benefit  the  Indian ;  but  the  Quakers  succeeded  no  better 
than  the  Puritans,  not  nearly  so  well  as  the  Jesuits.  Brain- 
erd  awakened  in  the  Delawares  a  perception  of  the  unity  of 
Christian  morals ;  and  yet  his  account  of  them  is  gloomy  and 
desponding  :  "  They  are  unspeakably  indolent  and  slothful ; 
they  discover  little  gratitude ;  they  seem  to  have  no  senti- 
ments of  generosity,  benevolence,  or  goodness."  The  Mora- 
vian Loskiel  could  not  change  their  character;  and,  like 
other  tribes,  its  fragments  at  last  migrated  to  the  west.  The 
condition  of  the  little  Indian  communities,  that  are  enclosed 
within  the  European  settlements  in  Canada,  in  Massachu- 
setts, in  Carolina,  is  hardly  cheering  to  the  philanthropist. 
In  New  Hampshire  and  elsewhere,  schools  for  Indian  chil- 
dren were  established ;  but,  as  they  became  fledged,  they  all 
escaped,  refusing  to  be  caged.  Harvard  College  enrolls  the 
name  of  an  Algonkin  youth  among  her  pupils;  but  the 
college  parchment  could  not  close  the  gulf  between  the  In- 
dian character  and  the  Anglo-American.  The  copper-colored 
men  are  characterized  by  a  moral  inflexibility,  a  rigidity  of 
attachment  to  their  hereditary  customs  and  manners.  The 
birds  and  the  brooks,  as  they  chime  forth  their  unwearied 
canticles,  chime  them  ever  to  the  same  ancient  melodies ; 
and  the  Indian  child,  as  it  grows  up,  displays  a  propensity 
to  the  habits  of  its  ancestors. 

This  determinateness  of  moral  character  is  marked  in  the 
organization  of  the  American  savage.  He  has  little  flexi- 
bility of  features  or  transparency  of  skin ;  and  therefore,  if 
he  depicts  his  passions,  it  is  by  strong  contortions,  or  the 
kindling  of  the  eye,  that  seems  ready  to  burst  from  its 
socket.  With  rare  exceptions,  he  cannot  blush  ;  the  move- 
ment of  his  blood  does  not  visibly  represent  the  movement 
of  his  affections ;  for  him,  the  domain  of  animated  beauty 
is  circumscribed ;  he  cannot  paint  to  the  eye  the  emotions 
of  moral  sensibility. 

This  effect  is  heightened  by  a  uniformity  of  intellectual 
culture  and  activity.  Youth  and  manhood  to  all  have  but 
VOL.  II.  29 


450 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVm. 


one  character;  and  where  villages  were  scattered  only  at 
wide  distances  in  the  wilderness,  where  marriage,  inter- 
dicted indeed  between  members  of  the  same  family  badge, 
was  yet  usually  limited  to  people  of  the  same  tribe,  ties 
of  blood  united  the  nation,  and  the  purity  of  the  race  in- 
creased the  uniformity  of  organization.  Each  individual 
was  marked  not  so  much  by  personal  peculiarities  as  by 
the  physiognomy  of  his  tribe. 

Nature  in  the  wilderness  is  true  to  her  type,  and  de- 
formity is  almost  unknown.  How  rare  is  it  to  find  the 
red  man  squint-eyed,  or  with  a  diseased  spine,  halt  or  blind, 
or  with  any  deficiency  or  excess  in  the  organs !  It  is  not 
merely  that,  in  the  savage  state  of  equality,  deformity  would 
never  perpetuate  itself  by  winning  through  the  aid  of  for- 
tune what  it  cannot  win  from  love ;  it  is  not  merely  that 
among  barbarians  the  feeble  and  the  misshaped  perish  from 
neglect  or  fatigue ;  the  most  refined  nation  is  most  liable  to 
produce  varieties  and  to  degenerate ;  when  the  habits  of 
uncivilized  simplicity  have  been  fixed  for  thousands  of 
years,  the  hereditary  organization  is  safe  against  monstrous 
deviations. 

This  inflexibility  of  organization  will  not  even  yield  to 
climate  :  there  is  the  same  general  resemblance  of  feature 
among  all  the  aboriginal  inhabitants,  from  the  Terra  del 
Fuego  to  the  St.  Lawrence ;  all  have  some  shade  of  the 
same  dull  vermilion,  or  cinnamon,  or  reddish-brown,  or  cop- 
per color,  carefully  to  be  distinguished  from  the  olive, — 
the  same  dark  and  glossy  hair,  coarse,  and  never  curling. 
They  have  beards,  but  generally  of  feeble  growth ;  their 
eye  is  elongated,  having  an  orbit  inclining  to  a  quadran- 
gular shape;  the  cheek-bones  are  prominent;  the  nose  is 
broad ;  the  jaws  project ;  the  lips  are  large  and  thick,  giv- 
ing to  the  mouth  an  expression  of  indolent  insensibility; 
the  forehead,  as  compared  with  Europeans,  is  narrow.  The 
facial  angle  of  the  European  is  assumed  to  be  eighty-seven  ; 
that  of  the  American,  by  induction  from  many  admeasure- 
ments, is  declared  to  be  seventy-five.  The  mean  internal 
capacity  of  the  skull  of  the  former  is  eighty-seven  cubic 
inches  ;  of  the  barbarous  tribes  of  the  latter,  it  is  found  to 
be,  at  least,  eighty-two. 


Chap.  XXXVm.      ORIGIN  OF  THE  INDIANS.  451 

And  yet  the  inflexibility  of  organization  is  not  so  absolute 
as  to  forbid  hope.  The  color  of  the  tribes  differs  in  its  hue ; 
and  some  have  been  found  of  so  fair  a  complexion  that  the 
blood  could  be  seen  as  it  mantled  to  the  cheek :  the  stature 
and  form  vary,  so  that  not  only  are  some  nations  tall  and 
slender,  but  in  the  same  nation  there  are  contrasts. 

Improvement,  too,  has  pervaded  every  clan  in  North 
America.  The  Indian  of  to-day  excels  his  ancestors  in  skill, 
in  power  over  nature,  and  in  knowledge ;  the  gun,  the  knife, 
and  the  horse,  of  themselves,  made  a  revolution  in  his  con- 
dition and  the  current  of  his  ideas :  that  the  wife  of  the 
white  man  is  cherished  as  his  equal  has  already  been  dimly 
noised  about  in  the  huts  of  the  Comanches ;  the  idea  of  the 
Great  Spirit,  who  is  the  master  of  life,  has  reached  the  re- 
mote prairies.  How  slowly  did  the  condition  of  the  com- 
mon people  of  Europe  make  advances !  For  how  many 
centuries  did  the  knowledge  of  letters  remain  unknown  to 
the  peasant  of  Germany  or  France !  How  languidly  did 
civilization  pervade  the  valleys  of  the  Pyrenees  !  How  far 
is  intellectual  culture  from  having  reached  the  peasantry 
of  Hungary !  Within  the  century  and  a  half  during  which 
the  Cherokees  have  been  acquainted  with  Europeans,  they 
have  learned  the  use  of  the  plough  and  the  axe,  of  herds 
and  flocks,  of  the  printing-press  and  water-mills ;  they  have 
gained  a  mastery  over  the  fields,  and  have  taught  the 
streams  to  run  for  their  benefit.  And  finally,  in  proof  of 
progress,  that  nation,  like  the  Choctaws,  the  Creeks,  the 
'Chippewas,  the  Winnebagoes,  and  other  tribes,  has  in- 
creased, not  in  intelligence  only,  but  in  numbers. 

"Whence  was  America  peopled?"  was  the  anxious  in- 
quiry that  followed  its  discovery.  "  Whence  came  its  trees 
and  its  grasses  ?  "  was  asked,  by  way  of  excuse  for  indif- 
ference. But  we  keep  the  record  of  the  introduction  of 
many  trees  and  grasses ;  and,  though  this  continent  was 
peopled  before  it  became  known  to  history,  it  is  yet  reason- 
able to  search  after  traces  of  connection  between  the  nations 
of  America  and  those  of  the  Old  World. 

To  aid  this  inquiry,  the  country  east  of  the  Mississippi 
has  no  monuments.     The  numerous  mounds  which  have  been 


452  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVIIL 

discovered  in  the  alluvial  valleys  of  the  west  have  by  some 
been  regarded  as  the  works  of  an  earlier  and  a  more  culti- 
vated race  of  men,  whose  cities  have  been  laid  waste,  whose 
language  and  institutions  have  been  destroyed  or  driven 
away,;  but  the  study  of  the  structure  of  the  earth  strips 
this  imposing  theory  of  its  marvels.  Where  imagination 
sometimes  fashions  relics  of  artificial  walls,  geology  sees  but 
crumbs  of  decaying  sandstone,  clinging  like  the  remains  of 
mortar  to  blocks  of  greenstone  that  rested  on  it ;  it  discov- 
ers in  parallel  intrenchments  a  trough,  that  subsiding  waters 
have  ploughed  through  the  centre  of  a  ridge ;  it  explains 
the  tessellated  pavement  to  be  but  a  layer  of  pebbles  aptly 
joined  by  water ;  and  on  finding  mounds,  composed  of  dif- 
ferent strata  of  earth,  arranged  horizontally  to  their  very 
edge,  it  ascribes  their  creation  to  the  Power  that  shaped  the 
globe  into  vales  and  hillocks.  When  the  waters  had  gently 
deposited  their  alluvial  burden  on  the  bosom  of  the  earth, 
it  is  not  strange  that,  of  the  fantastic  forms  shaped  by  the 
eddies,  some  should  resemble  the  ruins  of  a  fortress ;  that 
the  channel  of  a  torrent  should  seem  even  like  walls  that 
connected  a  town  with  its  harbor ;  that  natural  cones  should 
be  esteemed  monuments  of  inexplicable  toil.  But  the  ele- 
ments, as  they  crumble  the  mountain  and  scatter  the  decom- 
posed rocks,  do  not  measure  their  action  as  men  measure  the 
labor  of  their  hands.  The  hunters  of  old,  as  more  recently 
the  monks  of  La  Trappe,  may  have  selected  a  moimd  as  the 
site  of  their  dwellings,  the  aid  to  their  rude  fortifications, 
their  watch-tower  for  gaining  a  vision  of  God,  or,  more  fre- 
quently than  all,  as  their  burial-places.  Most  of  the  northern 
tribes,  perhaps  all,  preserved  the  bones  of  their  fathers  ;  and 
the  festival  of  the  dead  was  the  greatest  ceremony  of  west- . 
ern  faith.  The  explorations  of  good  geologists  and  other 
careful  observers  confirm  the  belief  that,  in  prehistoric  times, 
native  mound-builders  have  raised  artificial  earthworks,  some 
of  which  are  of  large  extent;  but,  when  nature  has  taken 
to  herself  her  share  in  the  construction  of  the  symmetrical 
hillocks,  nothing  will  remain  to  warrant  the  inference  of  a 
high  civilization  that  has  left  its  abodes  or  died  away,  or 
of  an  earlier  acquaintance  with  the  arts  of  the  Old  World. 


Chap.  XXXVIII.      ORIGIN  OF  THE  INDIANS.  453 

That  there  have  been  successive  irruptions  of  rude  tribes 
may  be  inferred  from  the  insulated  fragments  of  nations, 
which  are  clearly  distinguished  by  their  language.  The 
mounds  in  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi  have  been  used, 
some  of  them,  perhaps,  have  been  constructed,  as  burial- 
places  of  a  race,  of  which  the  peculiar  organization,  as  seen 
in  the  broader  forehead,  the  larger  facial  angle,  the  less 
angular  form  of  the  orbits  of  the  eye,  the  more  narrow 
nose,  the  less  evident  projection  of  the  jaws,  the  smaller 
dimensions  of  the  palatine  fossa,  the  flattened  occiput,  bears 
a  surprisingly  exact  resemblance  to  that  of  the  race  of 
nobles  who  sleep  in  the  ancient  tombs  of  Peru.  Retaining 
the  general  characteristics  of  the  red  race,  they  differ  obvi- 
ously from  the  present  tribes  of  Miamis  and  Wyandots. 
These  mouldering  bones,  from  hillocks  which  are  crowned 
by  trees  that  have  defied  the  storms  of  many  centuries, 
raise  bewildering  visions  of  migrations,  of  which  no  tan- 
gible traditions  exist ;  but  the  graves  of  earth  from  which 
they  are  dug,  and  the  feeble  fortifications  that  are  sometimes 
found  in  their  vicinity,  afford  no  special  evidence  of  early 
connection  with  other  continents.  "Among  the  more 
ancient  works,"  says  a  careful  observer,  who  is  not  disposed 
to  undervalue  the  significancy  of  these  silent  monuments, 
near  which  he  dwells,  and  which  he  has  carefully  explored, 
"  there  is  not  a  single  edifice  nor  any  ruins  which  prove  the 
existence  in  former  ages  of  a  building  composed  of  imper- 
ishable materials.  No  fragment  of  a  column,  nor  a  brick, 
nor  a  single  hewn  stone  large  enough  to  have  been  incorpo- 
rated into  a  wall,  has  been  discovered.  The  only  relics 
Avhich  remain  to  inflame  curiosity  are  composed  of  earth." 
Some  of  the  tribes  had  vessels  made  of  clay ;  near  Natchez, 
an  image  was  found,  of  a  substance  not  harder  than  clay 
dried  in  the  sun.  These  few  memorials  of  other  days  may 
indicate  revolutions  among  the  barbarous  hordes  of  the 
Americans  themselves ;  they  cannot  solve  for  the  inquirer 
the  problem  of  their  origin. 

Nor  is  it  safe  to  place  implicit  reliance  on  tradition.  The 
ideas  of  uncultivated  nations  are  vaguely  connected;  and 
pressing  want  compels  the  mind  to  be  indifferent  to  the 


454  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVIII. 

past,  not  less  than  careless  of  the  future.  Time  obliterates 
facts,  or  introduces  confusion  of  memory,  or  buries  one  tra- 
dition beneath  another.  Yet  it  is  the  tradition  of  the  Dela- 
wares  that  tribes  of  the  Algonkin  and  Wyandot  families 
expelled  from  the  basin  of  the  Ohio  its  ancient  tenants,  and 
that  the  fugitives  descended  the  Mississippi  to  renew  their 
villages  under  a  warmer  sun.  Vague  indeed  as  must  be  the 
shadows  that  glimmer  across  the  silent  darkness  of  interven- 
ing centuries,  physiologists  have  yet  convinced  themselves 
that  they  can  trace,  in  the  bones  which  time  has  not  wholly 
crumbled,  evidence  of  the  extent  of  the  Toltecan  family 
from  the  heart  of  North  America  to  the  Andes.  The  infer- 
ence has  no  natural  improbability.  We  know  the  wide 
range  of  the  Indian  brave ;  the  kindred  of  tlie  Athapasca 
race  spread  from  the  Kinaizian  Gulf  to  Hudson's  Bay ;  the 
Algonkin  was  spoken  from  the  Missinipi  to  Cape  Fear ;  the 
Dakotas  extend  from  the  Saskatchawan  beyond  the  basin 
of  the  Arkansas.  It  would  not  be  strange  if,  in  the  thou- 
sands of  years  from  which  no  echo  is  to  reach  us,  men  of 
one  American  family  had  bowed  to  the  sun  in  the  southern 
valley  of  the  Mississippi  and  within  the  tropics.  The 
Chitimechas  of  Louisiana,  improperly  confounded  with  the 
Natchez,  were  on  the  same  low  stage  of  civilization  with 
the  Chechemecas,  who  are  described  as  having  entered 
Mexico  from  the  north.  But  comparative  anatomy,  as  it 
has  questioned  the  graves,  and  compared  its  deductions  with 
the  traditions  and  present  customs  of  the  tribes,  has  not 
even  led  to  safe  inferences  respecting  the  relations  of  the 
red  nations  among  themselves ;  far  less  has  it  succeeded  in 
tracing  their  wanderings  from  continent  to  continent. 

Neither  do  the  few  resemblances  that  have  been  discov- 
ered between  the  roots  of  words  in  American  languages  on 
the  one  hand,  and  those  of  Asia  or  Europe  on  the  other, 
afford  historical  evidence  of  any  connection.  The  human 
voice  articulates  hardly  twenty  distinct,  primitive  sounds 
or  letters :  would  it  not  be  strange,  then,  were  there  no  ac- 
cidental resemblances  ?  Of  all  European  languages,  the 
Greek  is  the  most  flexible ;  and  it  is  that  which  most  easily 
furnishes  roots  analogous  to  those  of  America.     Not  one 


Chap.  XXXVm.      ORIGIN  OF  THE  INDIANS.  455 

clear  coincidence  has  been  traced  beyond  accident.  Hard 
by  Pamlico  Sound  dwelt,  and  apparently  had  dwelt  for  cen- 
turies, branches  of  the  Algonkin,  the  Huron-Iroquois,  and 
the  Catawba  families.  But  though  these  nations  were  in 
the  same  state  of  civilization,  were  mingled  by  wars  and 
captures,  by  embassies  and  alliances ;  though  they  had  a 
common  character  in  the  organization  of  their  language,  as 
well  as  in  their  customs,  government,  and  pursuits,  yet  each 
was  found  employing  a  language  of  its  own.  If  resem- 
blances cannot  be  traced  between  two  families  that  have 
dwelt  side  by  side  apparently  for  centuries,  who  will  hope 
to  recover  the  traces  of  the  mother  tongue  in  Siberia  or 
China?  The  results  of  comparison  have  thus  far  rebuked, 
rather  than  satisfied,  curiosity. 

It  is  still  more  evident  that  similarity  of  customs  fur- 
nishes no  basis  for  satisfactory  conclusions.  The  same 
kinds  of  knowledge  may  have  been  reached  independently ; 
the  same  habits  are  naturally  formed  under  similar  cir- 
cumstances. The  manifest  recurrence  of  artificial  peculiar- 
ities would  prove  a  connection  among  nations  ;  but  all  the 
usages  consequent  on  the  regular  wants  and  infirmities 
of  the  human  system  would  be  likely  of  themselves  to  be 
repeated ;  and,  as  for  arts,  they  only  offer  new  sources  for 
measuring  the  capacity  of  human  invention  in  its  barbarous 
or  semi-civilized  state. 

It  is  chiefly  on  supposed  analogies  of  customs  and  of 
language  that  the  lost  tribes  of  Israel,  "  who  took  counsel 
to  go  forth  into  a  farther  country,  where  never  mankind 
dwelt,"  have  been  discovered,  now  in  the  bark  cabins  of 
North  America,  now  in  the  secluded  valleys  of  the  Tennes- 
see, and  again,  as  the  authors  of  culture,  on  the  plains  of  the 
Cordilleras.  We  cannot  tell  the  origin  of  the  Goths  and 
Celts ;  proud  as  we  are  of  our  lineage,  we  cannot  trace  our 
own  descent ;  and  we  strive  to  identify,  in  the  most  western 
part  of  Asia,  the  very  hills  and  valleys  among  which  the 
ancestors  of  our  red  men  had  their  dwellings !  Humanity 
has  a  common  character.  The  ingenious  scholar  may  find 
analogies  in  language,  customs,  institutions,  and  religion, 
between  the  aborigines  of  America  and  any  nation  what- 


456 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVIIL 


ever  of  the  Old  World :  the  pious  curiosity  of  Christendom, 
and  not  a  peculiar  coincidence,  has  created  a  special  dis- 
position to  discover  a  connection  between  them  and  the 
Hebrews.  Inquirers  into  Jewish  history,  observing  faint 
resemblances  between  their  own  religious  faith  and  that  of 
the  American,  have  sought  to  trace  the  origin  of  common 
ideas  to  tradition  from  the  same  nation  and  the  same  sacred 
books,  when  they  should  not  have  rested  in  their  pursuit 
of  a  common  source,  till  they  had  reached  the  Fountain  of 
all  knowledge  and  the  Author  of  all  being. 

The  Egyptians  used  hieroglyphics ;  so  did  the  Mexicans, 
and  the  Pawnees,  and  the  Five  Nations.  Among  the 
Algonkins  now,  a  man  is  represented  by  a  rude  figure  of 
a  body,  surmounted  by  the  head  of  the  animal  which  gives 
a  badge  to  his  family ;  on  the  Egyptian  pictures,  men  are 
found  designated  in  the  same  way.  But  did  North  Amer- 
ica, therefore,  send  its  envoys  to  the  court  of  Sesostris  ? 

The  Carthaginians,  of  all  ancient  nations,  cultivated  the  art 
of  navigation  with  highest  success.  If  they  rivalled  Vasco 
da  Gama,  why  may  they  not  have  anticipated  Columbus  ? 
And  men  have  seen  on  rocks  in  America  Phoenician  inscrip- 
tions and  proofs  of  Phoenician  presence ;  but  these  disappear 
before  an  honest  skepticism.  Besides,  the  Carthaginians  were 
historians  also ;  and  a  Latin  poet  has  preserved  for  us  the 
testimony  of  Himilco,  "  that  the  abyss  beyond  the  Columns 
of  Hercules  was  to  them  interminable ;  that  no  mariner  of 
theirs  had  ever  guided  a  keel  into  that  boundless  deep." 

On  a  rock  by  the  side  of  a  small  New  England  stream, 
where  even  by  the  aid  of  the  tides  small  vessels  can  hardly 
pass,  a  rude  inscription  has  been  made  in  a  natural  block  of 
gray  granite.  By  unwarranted  interpolations  and  bold  dis- 
tortions, in  defiance  of  countless  improbabilities,  the  plastic 
power  of  fancy  transformed  the  rude  etching  into  a  Runic 
monument ;  a  still  more  recent  theory  insists  on  the  analogy 
of  its  forms  with  the  inscriptions  of  Fezzan  and  the  Atlas. 
Calm  observers,  in  the  vicinity  of  the  sculptured  rock,  see 
nothing  in  the  design  beyond  the  capacity  of  the  red  men 
of  New  England ;  and,  to  one  intimately  acquainted  with 
the  skill  and  manners  of  the  barbarians,  the  character  of  the 


Chap.  XXXVIII.      ORIGIN  OF  THE  INDIANS.  457 

drawing  suggests  its  Algonkin  origin.  Scandinavians  may- 
have  reached  the  shores  of  Labrador ;  the  soil  of  the  United 
States  has  not  one  vestige  of  their  presence. 

An  ingenious  writer  on  the  maritime  history  of  the 
Chinese  finds  traces  of  their  voyages  to  America  in  the 
fifth  century,  and  thus  opens  an  avenue  for  Asiatic  science 
to  pass  into  the  kingdom  of  Anahuac ;  but  the  theory 
refutes  itself.  If  Chinese  traders  or  emigrants  came  so 
recently  to  America,  there  would  be  customs  and  language 
to  give  evidence  of  it.  Nothing  is  so  indelible  as  speech  : 
sounds  that,  in  ages  of  unknown  antiquity,  were  spoken 
among  the  nations  of  Hindostan,  still  live  -in  their  signifi- 
cancy  in  the  language  which  we  daily  utter.  The  winged 
word  cleaves  its  way  through  time,  as  well  as  through  space. 
If  Chinese  came  to  civilize,  and  came  so  recently,  the  shreds 
of  Asiatic  civilization  would  be  still  clinging  visibly  to  all 
their  works. 

Nor  does  the  condition  of  astronomical  science  in  aborigi- 
nal America  prove  a  connection  with  Asia.  The  red  men 
could  not  but  observe  the  pole-star ;  and  even  their  children 
could  give  the  names  and  trace  the  motions  of  the  more 
brilliant  groups  of  stars,  of  which  the  return  marked  the 
seasons;  but  they  did  not  divide  the  heavens,  nor  even  a 
belt  in  the  heavens,  into  constellations.  It  is  a  curious 
coincidence  that,  among  the  Algonkins  of  the  Atlantic 
and  of  the  Mississippi,  alike  among  the  Narragansetts  and 
the  Illinois,  the  north  star  was  called  the  hear.  This  acci- 
dental agreement  with  the  widely  spread  usage  of  the  Old 
World  is  far  more  observable  than  the  imaginary  resem- 
blance between  the  signs  of  the  Mexicans  for  their  days 
and  the  signs  on  the  zodiac  for  the  month  in  Thibet.  The 
American  nation  had  no  zodiac,  and  could  not  therefore, 
for  the  names  of  its  days,  have  borrowed  from  Central  Asia 
the  symbols  that  marked  the  path  of  the  sun  through  the 
year.  Nor  had  the  Mexicans  either  weeks  or  lunar  months ; 
but,  after  the  manner  of  barbarous  nations,  they  divided 
the  days  in  the  year  into  eighteen  scores,  leaving  the  few 
remaining  days  to  be  set  apart  by  themselves.  This  division 
may  have  sprung  directly  from  their  system  of  enumeration ; 


458  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVIIL 

it  need  not  have  been  imported.  It  is  a  greater  marvel  that 
the  indigenous  inhabitants  of  Mexico  had  a  nearly  exact 
knowledge  of  the  length  of  the  year,  and,  at  the  end  of  one 
hundred  and  four  years,  made  their  intercalation  more  ac- 
curately than  the  Greeks,  the  Romans,  or  the  Egyptians. 
The  length  of  their  tropical  year  was  almost  identical  with 
the  result  obtained  by  the  astronomers  of  the  caliph  Al- 
mamon ;  but  let  no  one  derive  this  coincidence  from  inter- 
course, unless  he  is  prepared  to  believe  that,  in  the  ninth 
century  of  our  era,  there  was  commerce  between  Mexico 
and  Bagdad.  The  agreement  favors  clearly  the  belief  that 
Mexico  did  not  learn  of  Asia;  for,  at  so  late  a  period, 
intercourse  between  the  continents  would  have  left  its 
indisputable  traces.  No  inference  is  warranted,  except 
that,  in  the  clear  atmosphere  of  the  table-lands  of  Central 
America,  the  observers  may  have  watched  successfully  the 
progress  of  the  seasons ;  that  the  sun  ran  his  career  as  faith- 
fully over  the  heights  of  the  Cordilleras  as  over  the  plains 
of  Mesopotamia. 

When  to  this  is  added  that,  alone  of  mankind,  the  Amer- 
ican nations  universally  were  ignorant  of  the  pastoral  state ; 
that  they  kept  neither  sheep  nor  kine ;  that  they  knew  not 
the  use  of  the  milk  of  animals  for  food ;  that  they  had 
neither  wax  nor  oil;  that  they  had  no  iron,  —  it  becomes 
nearly  certain  that  the  imperfect  civilization  of  America  is 
its  own. 

Yet  the  original  character  of  American  culture  does  not 
insulate  the  American  race.  It  would  not  be  safe  to  reject 
the  possibility  of  an  early  communication  between  South 
America  and  the  Polynesian  world.  Nor  can  we  know 
what  changes  time  may  have  wrought  on  the  surface  of  the 
globe,  what  islands  may  have  been  submerged,  what  con- 
tinents divided.  But,  without  resorting  to  the  conjectures 
or  the  fancies  w^hich  geologists  may  suggest,  everywhere 
around  us  there  are  signs  of  migrations,  of  which  the  boun- 
daries cannot  be  set ;  and  the  movement  seems  to  have 
been  towards  the  east  and  south. 

The  number  of  primitive  languages  increases  near  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico;  and,  as  if  one  nation  had  crowded  upon 


Chap.  XXXVm.      ORIGIN  OF  THE  INDIANS.  459 

another,  in  the  canebrakes  of  the  state  of  Louisiana  there 
are  more  independent  languages  than  are  found  from  the 
Arkansas  to  the  pole.  In  like  manner,  they  abounded  on 
the  plateau  of  Mexico,  the  natural  highway  of  wanderers. 
On  the  western  shore  of  America,  there  are  more  languages 
than  on  the  east;  on  the  Atlantic  coast,  as  if  to  indicate 
that  it  had  never  been  a  thoroughfare,  one  extended  from 
Cape  Fear  to  the  Esquimaux ;  on  the  west,  between  the 
latitude  of  forty  degrees  and  the  Esquimaux,  there  were  at 
least  four  or  five.  The  Californians  derived  their  ancestors 
from  the  north ;  the  Aztecs  preserve  a  narrative  of  their 
northern  origin,  which  their  choice  of  residence  in  a  moun- 
tain region  confirmed. 

At  the  north,  the  continents  of  Asia  and  America  nearly 
meet.  In  the  latitude  of  sixty-five  degrees  fifty  minutes,  a 
line  across  Behring's  Straits,  from  Cape  Prince  of  Wales  to 
Cape  Tschowkotskoy,  would  measure  a  fraction  less  than 
forty-four  geographical  miles  ;  and  three  small  islands  divide 
the  distance. 

But,  within  the  latitude  of  fifty-five  degrees,  the  Aleutian 
Isles  stretch  from  the  great  promontory  of  Alaska  so  far  to 
the  west,  that  the  last  of  the  archipelago  is  but  three  hundred 
and  sixty  geographical  miles  from  the  east  of  Kamtschatka ; 
and  that  *  distance  is  so  divided  by  the  Mednoi  Island  and 
the  group  of  Behring,  that,  were  boats  to  pass  from  islet  to 
islet  from  Kamtschatka  to  Alaska,  the  longest  navigation  in 
the  open  sea  would  not  exceed  two  hundred  geographical 
miles,  and  at  no  moment  need  the  mariner  be  more  than 
forty  leagues  distant  from  land ;  and  a  chain  of  thickly  set 
isles  extends  from  the  south  of  Kamtschatka  to  Corea.  Now 
the  Micmac  on  the  north-east  of  our  continent  would,  in 
his  frail  boat,  venture  thirty  or  forty  leagues  out  at  sea :  a 
Micmac  savage  then,  steering  from  isle  to  isle,  might  in  his 
birch-bark  canoe  have  made  the  voyage  from  North-west 
America  to  China. 

Water,  ever  a  favorite  highway,  is  especially  the  highway 
of  uncivilized  man  :  to  those  who  have  no  axes,  the  thick 
jungle  is  impervious ;  canoes  are  older  than  wagons,  and 
ships  than  chariots ;  a  gulf,  a  strait,  the  sea  intervening 


460  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXVIIL 

between  islands,  divide  less  than  the  matted  forest.  Even 
civilized  man  emigrates  by  sea  and  by  rivers,  and  he  as- 
cended two  thousand  miles  above  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri, 
while  interior  tracts  in  New  York  and  Ohio  were  still  a  wil- 
derness. To  the  uncivilized  man,  no  path  is  free  but  the 
sea,  the  lake,  and  the  river. 

The  American  and  the  Mongolian  races  of  men,  on  the 
two  sides  of  the  Pacific,  have  a  near  resemblance.  Both 
are  alike  strongly  and  definitely  marked  by  the  more  capa- 
cious palatine  fossa,  of  which  the  dimensions  are  so  much 
larger  that  a  careful  observer  could,  out  of  a  heap  of  skulls, 
readily  separate  the  Mongolian  and  American  from  the 
Caucasian,  but  could  not  distinguish  them  from  each  other. 
Both  have  the  orbit  of  the  eye  quadrangular,  rather  than 
oval ;  both,  especially  the  American,  have  comparatively  a 
narrowness  of  the  forehead ;  the  facial  angle  in  both,  but 
especially  in  the  American,  is  comparatively  small ;  in  both, 
the  bones  of  the  nose  are  flatter  and  broader  than  in  the 
Caucasian,  and  in  so  equal  a  degree,  and  with  apertures 
so  similar,  that,  on  indiscriminate  selections  of  specimens 
from  the  two,  an  observer  could  not,  from  this  feature,  dis- 
criminate which  of  them  belonged  to  the  old  continent; 
both,  but  especially  the  Americans,  are  characterized  by  a 
prominence  of  the  jaws.  The  elongated  occiput  is  common 
to  the  American  and  the  Asiatic  ;  and  there  is  to  each  very 
nearly  the  same  obliquity  of  the  face.  Between  the  Mon- 
golian of  Southern  Asia  and  of  Northern  Asia  there  is  a 
greater  difference  than  between  the  Mongolian  Tatar  and 
the  North  American.  The  Iroquois  is  more  unlike  the 
Peruvian  than  he  is  unlike  the  wanderer  on  the  steppes  of 
Siberia.  Physiology  has  not  succeeded  in  defining  the 
qualities  which  belong  to  every  well-formed  Mongolian,  and 
which  never  belong  to  an  indigenous  American;  still  less 
can  geographical  science  draw  a  boundary  line  between  the 
races.  The  Athapascas  cannot  be  distinguished  from  Al- 
gonkin  Knisteneaux  on  the  one  side,  or  from  Mongolian 
Esquimaux  on  the  other.  The  dwellers  on  the  Aleutian 
Isles  melt  into  resemblances  with  the  inhabitants  of  each 
continent ;  and,  at  points  of  remotest  distance,  the  difference 


Chap.  XXX VIII.      ORIGIN  OF  THE  INDIANS.  461 

is  still  so  inconsiderable  that  Ledyard,  whose  curiosity  filled 
him  with  the  passion  to  circumnavigate  the  globe  and  cross 
its  continents,  as  he  stood  in  Siberia,  with  men  of  the  Mon- 
golian race  before  him,  and  compared  them  with  the  Indians 
who  had  been  his  old  play-fellows  and  schoolmates  at  Dart- 
mouth, writes  deliberately  that,  "universally  and  circum- 
stantially, they  resemble  the  aborigines  of  America."  On 
the  Connecticut  and  the  Obi,  he  saw  but  one  race. 

He  that  describes  the  Tungusians  of  Asia  seems  also 
to  describe  the  North  American.  That  the  Tschukchi  of 
North-eastern  Asia  and  the  Esquimaux  of  America  are  of 
the  same  origin  is  proved  by  the  affinity  of  their  languages ; 
thus  establishing  a  connection  between  the  continents  pre- 
vious to  the  discovery  of  America  by  Europeans.  The  in- 
digenous population  of  America  offers  no  new  obstacle  to 
faith  in  the  unity  of  the  human  race. 


462  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIX. 


CHAPTER  XXXIX. 

COLONIAL   EIVALRY    OP    FRANCE    AND    ENGLAND. 

Meantime,  the  house  of  Hanover  had  ascended  the  Eng- 
lish throne,  an  event  doubly  grateful  to  the  colonies, 
j^^g  The  contest  of  parties  is  the  struggle  between  ideas ; 
and  the  abiding  sympathy  of  nations  is  never  won 
but  by  an  appeal  to  the  controlling  principles  of  the  age. 
George  I.  had  imprisoned  his  wife ;  had,  from  jealousy, 
caused  a  young  man  to  be  assassinated ;  had  had  frequent 
and  angry  quarrels  with  his  son  ;  and  now,  being  fifty-three 
years  old,  attended  by  two  women  of  the  Hanoverian  aris- 
tocracy, who  were  proud  of  being  known  as  his  mistresses, 
he  crossed  the  sea  to  become  the  sovereign  of  a  country  of 
which  he  understood  neither  the  institutions,  the  manners, 
nor  the  language.  Intrusting  the  administration  to  the 
w^higs,  he  avowed  his  purpose  of  limiting  his  favor  to  them, 
as  though  he  were  himself  a  member  of  their  party  ;  and  in 
return,  by  a  complaisant  ministry,  places  in  the  highest 
ranks  of  the  English  aristocracy  were  secured  to  his  mis- 
tresses, whose  number  he  in  his  sixty-seventh  year,  just  be- 
fore his  death,  was  designing  to  enlarge.  And  yet  through- 
out English  America,  even  the  clergy  heralded  the  elevation 
of  George  I.  as  an  omen  of  happiness  ;  and  of  the  people 
of  Boston  it  was  announced  from  the  pulpit  that,  in  the 
whole  land,  "  not  a  dog  can  wag  his  tongue  to  charge  them 
with  disloyalty."  To  the  children  of  the  Puritans,  the 
accession  of  the  house  of  Hanover  was  the  triumph  of  Prot- 
estantism, and  the  guarantee  of  Protestant  liberties. 
1715.  The  advancement  of  the  new  dynasty  was,  more- 

^^^'  over,  a  pledge  of  a  pacific  policy.  Louis  XIV.  had 
outlived  his  children  and  every  grandchild,  except  the  new 
king  of  Spain  ;  his  own  glory ;  the  gratitude  of  those  whom 
he  had  advanced.     "  My  child,"  said  he,  as  he  gave  a  fare- 


1715.  RIVALRY  OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  463 

well  blessing  to  his  great-grandson,  the  boy  of  five  years 
old  who  was  to  be  his  successor,  "  you  will  be  a  great  king ; 
do  not  imitate  me  in  my  passion  for  war  ;  seek  peace  with 
your  neighbors,  and  strive  to  be,  what  I  have  failed  to  be, 
a  solace  to  your  people."  "  Sad  task,"  Madame  de  Main- 
tenon  had  written,  "  to  amuse  a  man  who  is  past  being 
amused ; "  and,  quitting  his  bedside,  she  left  him, 
after  a  reign  of  seventy-two  years,  to  die  alone.  He  sllt^'i. 
had  sought  to  extend  his  power  beyond  his  life  by 
establishing  a  council  of  regency ;  but  his  will  was  can- 
celled by  the  parliament,  and  his  nephew,  the  brave,  gen- 
erous, but  abandoned  Philip  of  Orleans,  became  absolute 
regent.  In  the  event  of  the  early  death  of  Louis  XY., 
who  would  inherit  the  throne  of  France?  By  the  treaty 
of  Utrecht,  Philip  of  Anjou,  accepting  the  crown  of  Spain, 
renounced  the  right  of  succession  to  that  of  France.  If 
the  treaty  were  maintained,  Philip  of  Orleans  was  heir- 
apparent  ;  if  legitimacy  could  sustain  the  necessary  succes- 
sion of  the  nearest  prince,  the  renunciation  of  the  king 
of  Spain  was  invalid,  and  the  integrity  of  his  right  unim- 
paired. Thus  the  personal  interest  of  the  regent  was 
opposed  to  the  rigid  doctrine  of  legitimacy,  and  inclined 
to  an  alliance  with  England ;  while  the  king  of  Spain, 
under  the  guidance  of  Alberoni,  was  moved  not  less  by 
hereditary  attachment  to  legitimacy  than  by  personal  am- 
bition to  disregard  the  provisions  of  the  treaty,  and  favor 
alike  the  pretensions  of  the  Stuarts  to  the  British  throne 
and  of  himself  to  the  succession  in  France.  The  French  min- 
ister Torcy,  the  gifted  son  of  Colbert,  had  avowed  his  faith 
that  God  has  established  the  order  of  succession,  which  man 
cannot  change ;  and  he  was  supplanted  by  the  wily,  degen- 
erate, avaricious  Du  Bois.  By  the  influence  of  Protestant 
England,  the  recklessly  immoral  Du  Bois,  thrice  infamous, 
as  the  corrupter  of  his  pupil,  as  the  licentious  priest  of 
a  spiritual  religion,  and  as  a  statesman  in  the  pay  of  a 
foreign  country,  became  cardinal,  the  successor  of  Fenelon 
in  an  archbishopric,  and  prime  minister  of  France.  Under 
such  auspices  was  a  happy  peace  secured  to  the  colonies 
of  rival  nations. 


464  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIX. 

1727.  Neither  the  death  of  George  I.  nor  the  coming  of 

age  of  Louis  XV.  changed  the  dispositions  of  the 
governments.  The  character  of  Walpole  was  a  pledge 
of  moderation.  Ignorant  of  theories,  not  familiar  with  the 
history  or  politics  of  foreign  nations,  he  was  profoundly- 
versed  in  the  maxims  of  worldly  wisdom.  Queen  Caroline 
asked  him  to  read  the  famous  work  of  Bishop  Butler  on 
religion,  and  he  told  her  that  his  religion  was  fixed,  and 
he  did  not  want  to  change  or  improve  it.  Destitute  of 
fortune  or  alliances,  he  rose  gradually  to  power,  which  he 
engrossed,  and  yet  exercised  temperately.  Jovial  and 
placable,  and  always  hopeful,  he  never  distrusted  his  pol- 
icy or  himself.  He  could  endure  no  rival,  and  sought  as 
friends  men  who  were  his  inferiors ;  nor  could  any  person 
of  high  pretension  long  continue  to  act  with  him.  His 
pleasures  degenerated  into  coarse  licentiousness;  and  he 
was  not  indifferent  to  the  vanity  of  magnificence.  In  the 
employment  of  means,  he  "  plunged  to  the  elbows  in  cor- 
ruption," and  had  the  daring  to  do  wrong  without  com- 
punction. Yet  his  strength  lay  in  his  policy  of  promoting 
the  commercial  grandeur  of  his  country,  fostering  its  man- 
ufactures, and  diminishing  its  debt.  Never  palliating  his 
conduct,  and  caring  only  for  majorities,  trading  for  num- 
bers, and  not  for  talents  or  for  appearances,  he  followed 
honesty  more  than  he  professed  to  do ;  and  if  he  never 
resisted  his  party  from  motives  of  moral  right,  if  he  had 
the  weakness  at  last  to  yield  the  cardinal  point  of  his  system 
rather  than  leave  the  cabinet,  he  at  least  never  parted  from 
his  friends  to  serve  himself.  The  house  of  commons  was 
his  avenue  to  power;  and  his  thoughts  were  chiefly  en- 
grossed by  intrigues  for  its  control. 

In  his  policy,  Walpole  was  favored  by  the  moderation 
of  Fleury,  who  at  the  age  of  seventy-three  was  called  by 
Louis  Xy.  to  direct  the  affairs  of  France.  The  wise  cardi- 
nal had  a  discriminating  and  candid  mind.  The  preserva- 
tion of  peace  was  his  rule  of  administration ;  and  he  was 
the  chosen  mediator  between  conflicting  sovereigns.  His 
clear  perceptions  anticipated  impending  revolutions ;  but 
he   hushed   the   storm   till   his  judgment   sunk  under  the 


1715.  RIVALRY  OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  465 

infirmities  of  fourscore.  Happy  period  for  the  colonies! 
For  a  quarter  of  a  century,  tlie  controversies  of  Great  Brit- 
ain and  France  respecting  colonial  boundaries,  though  they 
might  lead  to  collisions,  could  not  occasion  a  rupture. 

The  prospect  of  continued  peace  occasioned  a  rapid  ex- 
tension of  the  Indian  traffic  of  South  Carolina.  Favored 
by  the  mild  climate,  its  traders  had  their  storehouses  among 
the  Chickasaws  and  near  the  Natchez,  and  by  intimidation, 
rather  than  by  good-will,  gained  admission  even  into  vil- 
lages of  the  Choctaws.  Still  more  intimate  were  their  com- 
mercial relations  with  the  branches  of  the  Muskohgees  in 
the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  province,  especially  with  the 
Yamassees,  who,  from  impatience  at  the  attempts  for  their 
conversion  to  Christianity,  had  deserted  their  old  abodes 
in  Florida,  and  planted  themselves  from  Port  Royal  Island 
along  the  north-east  bank  of  the  Savannah  River.  The 
tribes  of  Carolina  had  been  regarded  as  "  a  tame  and  peace- 
able people ; "  they  were  very  largely  in  debt  for  the 
advances  which  had  been  made  them ;  and  "  the  traders 
began  to  be  hard  upon  them,  because  they  would  be  paid." 
The  influence  of  Bienville,  of  Louisiana,  prevailed  with  the 
Choctaws,  and  the  English  were  driven  from  their  villages. 
The  whole  Indian  world  from  Mobile  River  to  Cape  Fear 
was  in  commotion.  The  Yamassees  renewed  friendly  rela- 
tions with  the  Spaniards  at  St.  Augustine ;  they  won  the 
alliance  of  the  Catawbas  and  the  Cherokees ;  and  their  mes- 
senger with  "  the  bloody  stick  "  threaded  his  way  through 
flowering  groves  to  the  new  towns  of  the  Appalachian 
emigrants  on  the  Savannah,  to  the  ancient  villages  of  the 
Uchees,  and  bounded  across  the  rivers  along  which  the 
various  tribes  of  the  Muskohgees  had  their  dwellings. 
They  delayed  their  rising  till  the  deliberations  of  the  grand 
council  of  the  Creeks  should  be  finished,  and  the  emblem 
of  war  be  returned. 

In  passion-week  of  1715,  the  traders  at  Pocotaligo       1715. 
observed  the  madness   of   revenge  kindling  among 
the  Yamassees.     On  Thursday  night,  unaware  of  immediate 
danger,  Nairne,  the  English  agent,  who  bore  proposals  of 
peace,  slept  in  the  round  house  with  the  civil  chiefs  and 


466  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIX. 

1715  the  war-captains.  On  the  morning  of  Good  Friday, 
Apr.  15.  the  indiscriminate  massacre  of  the  English  began. 
One  boy  escaped  into  the  forest,  and,  after  wandering  for 
nine  days,  reached  a  garrison.  Seaman  Burroughs,  a  strong 
man  and  swift  runner,  broke  through  the  ranks  of  the 
Indian  band ;  and,  though  hotly  pursued  and  twice  wounded, 
by  running  ten  miles  and  swimming  one,  he  reached  Port 
Royal,  and  alarmed  the  town.  Its  inhabitants,  some  in 
canoes,  and  some  in  a  ship  which  chanced  to  be  in  the  har- 
bor, fled  to  Charleston.  The  bands  of  the  enemy,  hiding 
by  day  in  the  swamps,  and  by  night  attacking  the  scattered 
settlements,  drove  the  planters  towards  the  capital.  The 
Yamassees  and  their  confederates  advanced  even  as  far  as 
Stono,  where  they  halted,  that  their  prisoners,  planters 
with  their  wives  and  little  ones,  might  be  tormented  and 
sacrificed  at  leisure.  On  the  opposite  side,  a  troop  of  horse, 
insnared  by  a  false  guide  in  an  ambush  among  large  trees, 
thickly  strown  by  a  late  hurricane,  lost  its  commander  and 
retreated.  The  insurgent  Indians  carried  their  ravages  even 
to  the  parish  of  Goose  Creek ;  Charleston  itself  was  in  peril. 
But  the  impulse  of  wild  passion  could  not  prevail  against 
the  deliberate  courage  of  civilized  man.  On  the  north,  the 
insulated  band  of  invaders  received  a  check,  and  vanished 
into  the  forests;  on  the  south,  Charles  Craven,  the  governor 
of  the  province,  promptly  led  the  forces  of  Colleton  district 

to  the  final  conflict  with  the  confederated  warriors 
1715.       on  the  banks  of  the  Salke-hachie.    The  savages  fought 

long  and  desperately  from  behind  trees  and  coppices, 
using  arrows  as  well  as  bullets ;  but  at  last  they  gave  way, 
and  were  driven  beyond  the  present  limits  of  Carolina.  The 
Yamassees  retired  into  Florida,  and  at  St.  Augustine  were 
welcomed  with  peals  from  the  bells  and  a  salute  of  guns,  as 
though  allies  and  friends  had  returned  from  victory.  The 
lichees  left  their  old  settlements  below  Broad  River,  and 
the  Appalachians  their  new  cabins  near  the  Savannah,  and 
retired  towards  Flint  River.  When  Craven  returned  to 
Charleston,  he  was  greeted  with  the  applause  which  his 
alacrity,  courage,  and  conduct  had  merited.  The  colony 
had  lost  about  four  hundred  of  its  inhabitants. 


1719.  RIVALRY   OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  467 

The  war  with  the  Yamassees  was  followed  by  a  domestic 
revolution  in  Carolina.  Its  soil  had  been  defended  by  its 
own  people ;  and  they  resolved,  under  the  sovereignty  of 
the  English  monarch,  to  govern  themselves.  Scalping- 
parties  of  Yamassees,  from  their  places  of  refuge  in  Florida, 
continued  to  hover  on  the  frontiers  of  a  territory  which 
the  Spaniards  still  claimed  as  their  own.  The  proprietaries 
took  no  efficient  measures  for  protecting  their  colony. 
Instead  of  inviting  settlers,  they  monopolized  the  lands 
which  they  had  not  contributed  to  defend.  The  measures 
adopted  for  the  payment  of  the  colonial  debts  were  nega- 
tived, in  part  because  they  imposed  a  duty  of  ten  pounds 
on  the  introduction  of  every  negro  from  abroad.  The  polls 
for  the  election  of  representatives  had  hitherto  been  held 
for  the  whole  province  at  Charleston  alone ;  the  provincial 
legislature  permitted  the  votes  to  be  .given  in  each  parish. 
But,  because  the  reform  increased  popular  power,  this  also 
was  negatived.  Some  of  the  members  of  the  proprietary 
council  had,  by  long  residence,  become  attached  to  the  soil 
and  the  liberties  of  their  new  country;  they  were  sup- 
planted, or  their  influence  destroyed,  by  an  abrupt  increase 
of  the  number  of  their  associates.  In  consequence,  at  the 
next  election  of  assembly,  though  it  was  chosen  at  Charles- 
ton, the  agents  of  the  proprietaries  could  not  succeed  in 
procuring  the  return  of  any  one  whom  they  desired.  The 
members  elect,  at  private  meetings,  "resolved  to  have  no 
more  to  do  with  the  proprietors ; "  and  the  people  of  the 
province  entered  "  into  an  association  to  stand  by  their 
rights  and  privileges."  It  was  remembered  that  the  lords 
of  trade  had  formerly  declared  the  charter  forfeit ;  that  the 
house  of  peers  had  favored  its  prosecution ;  and,  as 
the  known  hostility  of  Spain  threatened  an  invasion,  nov?28. 
the  assembly  resolved  "to  have  no  regard  to  the 
officers  of  the  proprietaries  or  to  their  administration,"  and 
begged  Robert  Johnson,  the  governor,  "  to  hold  the  reins 
of  government  for  the  king."  When  Johnson,  remaining 
true  to  his  employers,  rejected  their  ofler,  they,  with  Arthur 
Middleton  for  their  president,  voted  themselves  "  a  conven- 
tion delegated  by  the  people ; "  and,  resolved  "  on  having  a 


468  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIX. 

governor  of  their  own  choosing,"  they  elected  the  brave 
James  Moore,  a  favorite  with  the  people,  "  whom  all  the 
country  had  allowed  to  be  the  fittest  person"  for  under- 
taking its  defence.  The  militia  of  Charleston  was  to  be 
reviewed  on  the  twenty-first  of  December;  and  that  day 
was  selected  for  proclaiming  the  new  chief  magistrate.  To 
Parris,  the  commanding  ofiicer,  Johnson  issued  particular 
orders  to  delay  the  muster,  nor  suffer  a  drum  to  be  beat  in 
the  town.  But  the  people  of  Carolina  had,  by  the  power  of 
public  opinion,  renounced  the  government  of  the  proprie- 
taries ;  and  on  the  appointed  day,  with  colors  flying  at  the 
forts  and  on  all  the  ships  in  the  harbor,  the  militia,  which 
was  but  the  people  in  arms,  drew  up  in  the  public  square. 
It  would  be  tedious  to  relate  minutely  by  what  menaces, 
what  entreaties,  what  arguments,  Johnson  struggled  to  resist 
the  insurrection.  In  the  king's  name,  he  commanded  Parris 
to  disperse  his  men ;  and  Parris  answered :  "  I  obey  the 
convention."  "  The  revolutioners  had  their  governor,  coun- 
cil, and  convention,  and  all  of  their  own  free  election." 
Peacefully  and  without  bloodshed,  palatines,  landgraves, 
and  caciques  were  dismissed  from  Carolina,  where  they 
had  become  so  little  connected  with  the  vital  interests  of 
the  state  that  history  with  difficulty  preserves  them  from 
oblivion. 

The  agent  from  Carolina  obtained  in  England  a 
ready  hearing  from  the  lords  of  the  regency.  The 
proprietors  were  esteemed  to  have  forfeited  their  charter  ; 
measures  were  taken  for  its  abrogation ;  and,  in  the  mean 
time,  Francis  Nicholson  —  an  adept  in  colonial  govern- 
ments, trained  by  experience  in  New  York,  in  Virginia,  in 
Maryland  ;  brave  and  not  penurious,  but  narrow  and  irasci- 
ble ;  of  loose  morality,  yet  a  fervent  supporter  of  the  church 
—  received  a  royal  commission  as  provisional  governor  of 
the  province.  The  bold  act  of  the  people  of  Carolina,  which 
in  England  was  respected  as  an  evidence  of  loyalty,  was 
remembered  in  America  as  an  example  for  posterity.  The 
introduction  of  the  direct  regal  supremacy  was  a  pledge  of 
more  than  security  to  the  southern  frontier  :  no  lines  were 
either  run  or  proposed  ;  and  the  neglect  was  an  omen  that 


1729.  RIVALRY  OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  469 

the  limits  of  the  stronger  nation  would  be  advanced  by  en- 
croachments or  conquest. 

The  first  act  of  Nicholson  confirmed  peace  with  1721. 
the  natives.  On  the  borders  of  the  territory  of  the 
peaceful  Cherokees,  he  was  met,  in  congress,  by  the  chiefs 
of  thirty-seven  different  villages.  They  smoked  with  him 
the  pipe  of  peace,  and  marked  the  boundaries  between  "  the 
beloved  nation"  and  the  colonists;  and  they  returned  to 
their  happy  homes  in  the  mountain  vales,  pleased  with  their 
generous  brother  and  new  ally.  A  treaty  of  commerce  and 
peace  was  also  concluded  with  the  Creeks,  whose  hunting- 
grounds  it  was  solemnly  agreed  should  extend  to  the  Savan- 
nah. Yet  the  ambition  of  England  was  not  bounded  by 
that  river  ;  and,  in  defiance  of  remonstrances  from  Spain 
and  from  Florida,  a  fort  was  kept  by  a  small  English  gar- 
rison on  the  forks  of  the  Alatamaha. 

The  controversy  was  not  adjusted  when,  in  Sep-  1729. 
tember,  1729,  under  the  sanction  of  an  act  of  parlia- 
ment, and  for  the  sum  of  twenty-two  thousand  five  hundred 
pounds,  seven  eighths  of  the  proprietaries  sold  to  the  crown 
their  territory,  their  powers  of  jurisdiction,  and  the  arrears 
of  their  quit-rents.  Lord  Carteret  alone,  joining  in  the  sur- 
render of  the  government,  reserved  an  eighth  share  in  the 
soil.  This  is  the  period  when  a  royal  governor  was  first 
known  in  North  Carolina.  Its  secluded  hamlets  had  not 
imitated  the  popular  revolution  of  the  southern  province. 

So  soon  as  the  royal  government  was  fully  confirmed,  it 
attempted  by  treaties  of  union  to  convert  the  Indians  on 
the  borders  of  Carolina  into  allies  or  subjects ;  and,  early 
in  1730,  Sir  Alexander  Cumming,  a  special  envoy,  guided 
by  Indian  traders  to  Keowee,  summoned  a  general  assem- 
bly of  the  chiefs  of  the  Cherokees  to  meet  at  Nequassee,  in 
the  valley  of  the  Tennessee.  They  came  together  in  the 
month  of  April,  and  were  told  that  King  George  was  their 
sovereign.  When  they  offered  a  chaplet,  four  scalps  of 
their  enemies  and  five  eagles'  tails,  as  the  records  of  the 
treaty  and  the  pledge  of  their  fidelity,  it  was  proposed  to 
them  to  send  deputies  to  England  ;  and  English  writers 
interpreted  their  assent  as  an  act  of  homage  to  the  British 


470  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIX. 

monarch.  In  England,  a  treaty  of  alliance,  offensive  and 
defensive,  was  drawn  up  by  the  English,  and  signed  by  the 
name  and  seal  of  one  party,  by  the  emblems  and  marks  of 
the  other.  No  white  men,  except  the  English,  might  build 
cabins  or  plant  corn  upon  the  lands  of  the  Cherokees.  Thus 
a  nation  rose  up  as  a  barrier  against  the  French.  The  seven 
envoys  from  the  mountains  of  Tennessee,  already  bewil- 
dered by  astonishment  at  the  vastness  of  London  and  the 
splendor  and  discipline  of  the  English  army,  were  presented 
at  court ;  and,  when  the  English  king  claimed  their  land 
and  all  the  country  about  them  as  his  property,  surprise  and 
inadvertence  extorted  from  one  of  their  war-chief- 
Sept.  tains  the  irrevocable  answer,  '-'- To-evrhah^''  —  it  is 
"  a  most  certain  truth  ; "  and  the  delivery  of  eagles' 
feathers  confirmed  his  words.  The  covenant  promised  that 
love  should  flow  for  ever  like  the  rivers,  that  peace  should 
endure  like  the  mountains;  and  it  was  faithfully  kept,  at 
least  for  one  generation. 

Of  the  maritime  powers  of  Europe,  it  was  Spain  which 
chiefly  took  umbrage  at  the  progress  of  the  English  settle- 
ments and  the  English  alliances  at  the  south.  The  ques- 
tions at  issue  with  France  were  attended  with  greater 
difiiculty.  The  treaty  of  Utrecht  surrendered  to  England 
Acadia  and  Nova  Scotia  "with  its  ancient  boundaries." 
Disputes  were  to  arise  respecting  them ;  but  even  the  east- 
ern frontier  of  the  province  of  Massachusetts  was  not  vin 
dicated  without  a  contest.  To  the  country  between  the 
Kennebec  and  the  St.  Croix,  a  new  claimant  appeared  in 
the  Abenakis  themselves.  In  1716,  the  general  court  ex- 
tended its  jurisdiction  to  the  utmost  bounds  of  the  province  ; 
the  fishermen  and  the  traders  of  New  England  not  only 
revived  the  villages  that  had  been  desolated  during  the  war, 
but,  on  the  eastern  bank  of  the  Kennebec,  laid  the  founda- 
tion of  new  settlements,  and  protected  them  by  forts. 
1717.  The  red  men  became  alarmed.     Away  went  their 

1720.  chiefs  across  the  forests  to  Quebec,  to  ask  if  France 
had  indeed  surrendered  the  country,  of  which  they  them- 
selves were  the  rightful  lords  ;  and,  as  Vaudreuil  answered 
that  the  treaty  of  which  the  English  spoke  made  no  mention 


1717.  RIVALRY  OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  471 

of  their  country,  their  chief  resisted  the  claim  of  the  gov- 
ernment of  Massachusetts.  "  I  have  my  land,"  said  he, 
"  where  the  Great  Spirit  has  placed  me ;  and,  while  there 
remains  one  child  of  my  tribe,  I  shall  fight  to  preserve  it." 
France  could  not  maintain  its  influence  by  an  open  alliance, 
but  its  missionaries  guided  their  converts.  At  Norridge- 
wock,  on  the  banks  of  the  Kennebec,  the  venerable  Sebas- 
tian Rasles,  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  the 
companion  and  instructor  of  savages,  had  gathered  a  flour- 
ishing village  round  a  church  which,  rising  in  the  desert, 
made  some  pretensions  to  magnificence.  Severely  ascetic, 
using  no  wine,  and  little  food  except  pounded  maize,  a  rigor- 
ous observer  of  the  days  of  Lent,  he  built  his  own  cabin,  tilled 
his  own  garden,  drew  for  himself  wood  and  water,  prepared 
his  own  hominy,  and,  distributing  all  that  he  received,  gave 
an  example  of  religious  poverty.  And  yet  he  was  laborious 
in  garnishing  his  forest  sanctuary,  believing  the  faith  of  the 
savage  must  be  quickened  by  striking  appeals  to  the  senses. 
Himself  a  painter,  he  adorned  the  humble  walls  of  his 
church  with  pictures.  There  he  gave  instruction  almost 
daily.  Following  his  pupils  to  their  wigwams,  he  tempered 
the  spirit  of  devotion  with  familiar  conversation  and  inno- 
cent gayety,  winning  the  mastery  over  their  souls  by  his 
powers  of  persuasion.  He  had  trained  a  little  band  of  forty 
young  savages,  arrayed  in  cassock  and  surplice,  to  assist  in 
the  service  and  chant  the  hymns  of  the  church ;  and  their 
public  processions  attracted  a  great  concourse  of  red  men. 
Two  chapels  were  built  near  the  village,  one  dedicated  to 
the  Virgin  and  adorned  with  her  statue  in  relief,  another 
to  the  guardian  angel ;  and  before  them  the  hunter  muttered 
his  prayers,  on  his  way  to  the  river  or  the  woods.  When 
the  tribe  descended  to  the  seaside,  in  the  season  of  w^ild 
fowl,  they  were  followed  by  Rasles ;  and  on  some  islet  a 
little  chapel  of  bark  was  quickly  consecrated. 

The  government  of  Massachusetts  attempted,  in       1717, 
turn,  to  establish  a  mission ;  and  its  minister  made  a 
mocking  of  purgatory  and  the  invocation  of  saints,  of  the 
cross  and   the  rosary.     "  My  Christians,"  retorted  Rasles, 
"  believe  the  truths  of  the  Catholic  faith,  but  are  not  skilful 


472  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIX. 

disputants ; "    and   he   prepared  a  defence  of  the  Roman 

church.      Thus   Calvin  and   Loyola  met   in   the  woods  of 

Maine.      But  the  Protestant  minister,  unable  to  compete 

with  the  Jesuit  for  the  affections  of  the  Indians,  returned 

to  Boston,  while  "  the  friar  remained,  the  incendiary  of 

mischief." 

1721  Several  chiefs  had,  by  stratagem,  been  seized  by 

the  New  England  government,  and  were  detained  as 
hostages.  For  their  liberty  a  stipulated  ransom  had  been 
paid;  and  still  they  were  not  free.  The  Abenakis  then 
demanded  that  their  territory  should  be  evacuated,  and  the 
imprisoned  warriors  delivered  up,  or  reprisals  would  follow. 
Instead  of  negotiating,  the  English  seized  the  young  Baron 
de  Saint-Castin,  who,  being  a  half-breed,  at  once  held  a 
French  commission  and  was  an  Indian  war-chief ;  and,  after 

vainly  soliciting  the  savages  to  surrender  Rasles,  in 
Jan."       January,  1722,  Westbrooke  led  a  strong  force  to  Nor- 

ridgewock  to  take  him  by  surprise.  The  warriors 
were  absent  in  the  chase ;  the  Jesuit  had  sufficient  warning 
to  escape,  with  the  old  men  and  the  infirm,  into  the  forest ; 
and  the  invaders  gained  nothing  but  his  papers.  These 
were  important;  for  the  correspondence  with  Yaudreuil 
proved  a  latent  hope  of  establishing  the  power  of  France  on 
the  Atlantic.  There  was  found,  moreover,  a  vocabulary  of 
the  Abenaki  language,  which  the  missionary  had  compiled, 
and  which  has  been  preserved  to  this  day. 

On  returning  from  the  chase,  the  Indians,  after  planting 
their  grounds,  resolved  to  destroy  the  English  settlements 
on  the  Kennebec.  They  sent  deputies  to  carry  the  hatchet 
and  chant  the  war-song  among  the  Hurons  of  Quebec  and 
in  every  village  of  the  Abenakis.  The  war-chiefs  met  at 
Norridgewock,  and  the  work  of  destruction  began  by  the 
burning  of  Brunswick. 

The  clear  judgment  of  Rasles  perceived  the  issue.  The 
forts  of  the  English  could  not  be  taken  by  the  feeble  means 
of  the  natives :  "  unless  the  French  should  join  with  the 
Indians,"  he  reported  the  land  as  lost.  Many  of  his  red 
people  at  his  bidding  retired  to  Canada ;  but,  to  their 
earnest  solicitations  that  he  would  share    their   flight,  the 


1724.  RIVALRY  OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  473 

aged  man,  foreseeing  the  impending  ruin  of  Norridgewock, 
replied :  "  I  count  not  my  life  dear  unto  myself,  so  I  may 
finish  with  joy  the  ministry  which  I  have  received." 

The  government  of  Massachusetts,  by  resolution,  1722. 
declared  the  eastern  Indians  to  be  traitors  and  rob-  *^"^^' 
bers ;  and,  while  troops  were  raised  for  the  war,  it  stimu- 
lated the  activity  of  private  parties  by  offering  for  each 
Indian  scalp  at  first  a  bounty  of  fifteen  pounds,  and  after- 
wards of  a  hundred. 

The  expedition  to  Penobscot  was  under  public  au- 
spices. After  five  days'  march  through  the  woods,  j^^^^^^^.g 
"VYestbrooke,  with  his  company,  came  upon  the  Ind- 
ian settlement,  that  was  probably  above  Bangor,  at  Old 
Town.  He  found  a  fort,  seventy  yards  long  and  fifty  in 
breadth,  well  protected  by  stockades,  fourteen  feet  high,  en- 
closing twenty-three  houses  regularly  built.  On  the  south 
side,  near  at  hand,  was  the  chapel,  sixty  feet  long  and  thirty 
wide,  well  and  handsomely  furnished  within  and  without ; 
and  south  of  this  stood  the  "  friar's  dwelling-house."  The 
invaders  arrived  there  on  the  ninth  of  March,  at  six  in  the 
evening.  That  night  they  set  fire  to  the  village,  and  by 
sunrise  next  morning  every  building  was  in  ashes. 

Twice  it  was  attempted  in  vain  to  capture  Rasles. 
At  last,  on  the  twenty-third  of  August,  1724,  a  party       1724. 
from  New  England   reached   Norridgewock    unper- 
ceived,  and  escaped   discovery  till   they  discharged   their 
guns  at  the  cabins. 

There  were  then  about  fifty  warriors  in  the  place.  They 
seized  their  arms  and  marched  forth  tumultuously,  not  to 
fight,  but  to  protect  the  flight  of  their  wives,  and  children, 
and  old  men.  Rasles,  roused  to  the  danger  by  their  clamors, 
went  forward  to  save  his  flock  by  drawing  down  upon  him- 
self the  attention  of  the  assailants  ;  and  his  hope  was  not 
vain.  Meantime,  the  savages  fled  to  the  river,  which  they 
passed  by  wading  and  swimming ;  while  the  English  pil- 
laged the  cabins  and  the  church,  and  then  set  them  on 
fire. 

After  the  retreat  of  the  invaders,  the  savages  returned 
to  nurse  their  wounded  and  bury  their  dead.     They  found 


474  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIX. 

Rasles  mangled  by  many  blows,  scalped,  his  skull  broken 
in  several  places,  his  mouth  and  eyes  filled  with  dirt ;  and 
they  buried  him  beneath  the  spot  where  he  used  to  stand 
before  the  altar. 

At  the  death  of  Sebastian  Rasles,  the  most  noted  of  the 
Catholic  missionaries  in  New  England,  he  was  in  his  sixty- 
seventh  year,  and  had  been  thirty-seven  years  in  the  service 
of  the  church  in  America.  He  was  naturally  robust,  but  had 
wasted  by  fatigues,  age,  and  fastings.  He  knew  several 
dialects  of  the  Algonkin,  and  had  been  as  a  missionary 
among  various  tribes  from  the  ocean  to  the  Mississippi.  In 
1721,  Father  de  la  Chasse  had  advised  his  return  to  Canada. 
"God  has  intrusted  to  me  this  flock:"  such  was  his  answer; 
"  I  shall  follow  its  fortunes,  happy  to  be  immolated  for  its 
benefit."  In  New  England,  he  was  regarded  as  the  leader 
of  the  insurgent  Indians ;  the  brethren  of  his  order  mourned 
for  him  as  a  martyr,  and  gloried  in  his  happy  immortality 
as  a  saint.  The  French  ministry,  intent  on  giving  an  ex- 
ample of  forbearance,  restrained  its  indignation,  and  trusted 
that  the  joint  commissioners  for  regulating  boundaries  would 
restore  tranquillity. 

The  overthrow  of  the  missions  completed  the  ruin  of 
French  influence.  The  English  themselves  had  grown  skil- 
ful in  the  Indian  warfare  ;  and  no  war-parties  of  the  red 
men  ever  displayed  more  address  or  heroism  than  the  brave 
John  Lovewell  and  his  companions.  His  volunteer  associ- 
ates twice  returned  laden  with  scalps.  On  a  third 
April,  expedition,  falling  into  an  ambush  of  a  larger  party 
of  Saco  Indians,  he  lost  his  life  in  Fryeburg,  near  a 
sheet  of  water  which  has  taken  his  name ;  and  the  stream 
that  feeds  it  is  still  known  to  the  peaceful  husbandman  as 
the  Battle  Brook. 

At  last,  the  eastern  Indians,  despairing  of  success, 
instigated,  but  not  supported,  by  the  French,  unable 
to  contend  openly  with  their  opponents,  and  excelled  even 
in  their  own  methods  of  warfare,  concluded  a  peace, 
Augf'e.    which  was  ratified  by  the  chiefs  as  far  as  the   St. 
John,  and  was  long  and  faithfully  maintained.     In- 
fluence by  commerce  took  the  place  of  influence  by  religion, 


1726.  KIVALRY  OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  475 

and  English  trading-houses  supplanted  French  missions. 
Peace  on  the  eastern  frontier  revived  the  maritime  enter- 
prise of  Maine,  and  its  settlements  began  to  obtain  a  fixed 
prosperity. 

The  wilderness  that  divided  the  contending  claimants 
postponed  hostilities.  By  the  treaty  of  Utrecht,  the  sub- 
jects and  friends  of  both  nations  might  resort  to  each  other 
for  the  reciprocal  benefit  of  their  trade  ;  and  an  active  com- 
merce subsisted  between  Albany  and  Montreal  by  means  of 
the  Christian  Iroquois.  The  French,  in  1719,  gained  leave 
to  build  a  trading-house  in  the  land  of  the  Onondagas.  In 
1720,  Jeancoeur  took  possession  of  Niagara;  and,  in  1722, 
the  governor  of  New  York  was  instructed  "  to  extend  with 
caution  the  English  settlements  as  far  as  possible,  since 
there  was  no  great  probability  of  obtaining  a  determination 
of  the  general  boundary."  Burnet  bestowed  assiduous  care 
on  the  condition  of  the  frontiers,  invoked  colonial  concert, 
appealed  to  the  ministry,  and,  in  1726,  persuaded  the  New 
York  legislature,  at  its  own  cost,  to  lay  the  foundation  of 
Oswego.  This  was  the  first  in  the  series  of  measures  which 
carried  the  bounds  of  the  English  colonies  towards  Michi- 
gan. In  1727,  this  trading-post  was  converted  into  a  for- 
tress, in  defiance  of  the  discontent  of  the  Iroquois  and  the 
constant  protest  of  France.  It  was  the  avenue  through 
which  the  west  was  reached  by  English  traders  ;  and  formed 
a  station  of  the  Miamis,  and  even  of  the  Hurons,  from  De- 
troit on  their  way  to  Albany. 

The  limit  of  jurisdiction  between  England  and  France 
was  not  easy  of  adjustment.  Canada,  by  its  original  char- 
ter, comprised  the  whole  basin  of  the  St.  Lawrence ;  and 
that  part  of  Vermont  and  New  York  which  is  watered  by 
streams  flowing  to  the  St.  Lawrence  had  ever  been  regarded 
by  France  as  Canadian  territory.  The  boat  of  Champlain 
had  entered  the  lake  that  makes  his  name  a  familiar  word 
in  the  same  summer  in  which  Hudson  ascended  the  North 
River.  Holland  had  never  dispossessed  the  French ;  and 
the  conquest  and  surrender  of  New  Netherland  could  trans- 
fer no  more  than  the  possessions  of  Holland.  There  was, 
therefore,  no  act  of  France  relinquishing  its  claim  till  the 


476  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIX. 

treaty  of  Utrecht.  The  ambiguous  language  of  that  treaty- 
did,  indeed,  refer  to  "the  Five  Nations  subject  to  Eng- 
land ; "  but  French  diplomacy  would  not  interpret  an  allu- 
sion to  savage  hordes  as  a  surrender  of  Canadian  territory. 
The  right  of  France,  then,  to  that  part  of  New  York  and 
Vermont  which  belongs  to  the  basin  of  the  St.  Lawrence, 
sprung  from  discovery,  occupation,  the  uniform  language  of 
its  grants  and  state  papers. 

As  the  claims  of  discovery  and  earliest  occupation  were 
clearly  with  the  French,  the  English  revived  and  exagger- 
ated the  rights  of  the  Five  Nations.  In  the  strife  with 
France,  during  the  government  of  De  la  Barre,  some  of 
their  chiefs  had  fastened  the  arms  of  the  Duke  of  York  to 
their  castles ;  and  this  act  was  taken  as  a  confession  of 
irrevocable  allegiance  to  England.  The  treaty  of  Ryswick 
made  the  condition  at  the  commencement  of  hostilities  the 
basis  of  occupation  at  the  time  of  peace.  Now  at  the  open- 
ing of  the  war  Fort  Frontenac  had  been  razed,  and  the 
country  around  it  and  Montreal  itself  were  actually  in  pos- 
session of  the  Mohawks ;  so  that  all  Upper  Canada  was 
declared  to  have  become,  by  the  treaty  of  Ryswick,  a  part 
of  the  domain  of  the  Five  Nations,  and  therefore  subject 
to  England. 

Again,  at  the  opening  of  the  war  of  the  Spanish 
succession,  the  chiefs  of  the  Mohawks  and  Oneidas 
had  appeared  in  Albany ;  and  the  English  commissioners, 
who  could  produce  no  treaty,  yet  made  a  minute  in  their 
books  of  entry  that  the  Mohawks  and  the  Oneidas  had 
placed  their  hunting-grounds  under  the  protection  of  the 
English.  Immediately,  their  hunting-grounds  were  inter- 
preted to  extend  to  Lake  Nipising;  and,  on  old  English 
maps,  the  region  is  included  within  the  dominions  of  Eng- 
land, by  virtue  of  an  act  of  cession  from  the  Iroquois. 

But,  as  a  treaty  of  which  no  record  existed  could  hardly 
be  cited  by  English  lawyers  as  a  surrender  of  lands,  it  was 
the  object  of  Governor  Burnet  to  obtain  a  confirmation  of 
this  grant.     Accordingly,  in  the  treaty  concluded  at 
Sepl^u.  Albany,  in  September,  1726,  the  cession  of  the  Iro- 
quois country  west  of  Lake  Erie,  and  north  of  Erie' 


1721.  EIVALEY  OF  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.  477 

and  Ontario,  was  confirmed;  and,  in  addition,  a  strip  of 
sixty  miles  in  width,  extending  from  Oswego  to  Cuyahoga 
River  at  Cleveland,  was  "  submitted  and  granted  "  by 
sachems  of  the  three  western  tribes  to  "  their  sovereign 
lord.  King  George,"  "to  be  protected  and  defended  by  his 
said  majesty,  for  the  use  of  the  said  three  nations."  The 
chiefs  could  give  no  new  validity  to  the  alleged  treaty  of 
1701 ;  they  had  no  authority  to  make  a  cession  of  land,  nor 
were  they  conscious  of  attempting  it.  If  France  had 
renounced  its  rights  to  Western  New  York,  it  had  done  so 
only  by  the  treaty  of  Utrecht.  Each  new  ground  for  an 
English  claim  was  a  confession  that  the  terms  of  that  treaty 
were  far  from  being  explicit. 

But  France  did  not  merely  remonstrate  against  the 
attempt  to  curtail  its  limits  and  appropriate  its  provinces. 
Entering  Lake  Champlain,  it  established,  in  1731,  the  for- 
tress of  the  Crown.  The  garrison  of  the  French  was  at 
first  stationed  on  the  eastern  shore  of  the  lake,  within  the 
present  township  of  Addison,  but  soon  removed  to  the 
Point,  where  its  batteries  defended  the  approach  to  Canada 
by  water.  But  already,  in  1724,  the  government  of  Massa- 
chusetts had  established  Fort  Dummer,  on  the  site  of 
Brattleborough  ;  and,  one  hundred  and  fifteen  years  after 
the  first  inroad  of  Champlain,  a  settlement  of  civilized  man 
was  made  in  Vermont.  That  Fort  Dummer  was  within  the 
limits  of  Massachusetts  was  not  questioned  by  the  French ; 
for  the  fort  at  Saybrook,  according  to  the  French  rule,  gave 
to  England  the  whole  basin  of  the  river. 

The  fort  at  Niagara  had  been  renewed.  Among  the 
public  officers  of  the  French,  who  gained  influence  over  the 
red  men  by  adapting  themselves  with  happy  facility  to  life 
in  the  wilderness,  was  the  Indian  agent  Joncaire. 
For  twenty  years  he  had  been  successfully  employed  1721. 
in  negotiating  with  the  Senecas.  He  was  become, 
by  adoption,  one  of  their  own  citizens  and  sons,  and  to  the 
culture  of  a  Frenchman  added  the  fluent  eloquence  of  an 
Iroquois  warrior.  "  I  have  no  happiness,"  said  he  in  coun- 
cil, "  like  that  of  living  with  my  brothers ; "  and  he  asked 
leave  to  build  himself  a  dwelling.     "  He  is  one  of  our  own 


478  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XXXIX. 

children,"  it  was  said  in  reply ;  "  he  may  build  where  he 
will."  And  he  planted  himself  in  the  midst  of  a  group  of 
cabins  at  Lewiston,  higher  than  where  La  Salle  had  driven 
a  rude  palisade,  and  where  Denonville  had  designed  to  lay 
the  foundations  of  a  settlement.  In  May  of  1721,  a  party 
arrived  at  the  spot  to  take  measures  for  a  permanent  estab- 
lishment; among  them  were  the  son  of  the  governor  of 
New  France,  De  Longeuil,  from  Montreal,  and  Charlevoix, 
best  of  early  writers  on  American  history.  It  was  then 
resolved  to  construct  a  fortress.  The  party  were  not  insen- 
sible to  the  advantages  of  the  country ;  they  observed  the 
rich  soil  of  Western  New  York,  its  magnificent  forests,  its 
agreeable  and  fertile  slopes,  its  mild  climate.  "A  good 
fortress  in  this  spot,  with  a  reasonable  settlement,  will 
enable  us,"  thus  they  reasoned,  "  to  dictate  law  to  the 
Iroquois,  and  to  exclude  the  English  from  the  fur-trade." 
And  in  1726,  four  years  after  Burnet  had  built  the  English 
trading-house  at  Oswego,  the  flag  of  France  floated  from 
Fort  Niagara. 

The  fortress  at  Niagara  gave  a  control  over  the  commerce 
of  the  remote  interior:  if  furs  descended  by  the  Ottawa, 
they  went  directly  to  Montreal ;  and,  if  by  way  of  the  lakes, 
they  passed  over  the  portage  at  the  falls.  The  boundless 
region  in  which  they  were  gathered  knew  no  jurisdiction 
but  that  of  the  French,  whose  trading  canoes  were  safe 
in  all  the  waters,  whose  bark  chapels  rose  on  every  shore, 
whose  missions  extended  beyond  Lake  Superior.  The 
implacable  Foxes  were  chastised,  and  driven  from  their  old 
abode  on  the  borders  of  Green  Bay.  Except  the  fortress  at 
Oswego,  the  English  held  no  post  in  the  country  watered 
by  the  St.  Lawrence  and  its  tributaries. 


Chap.  XL.  PROGRESS  OF  LOUISIANA.  479 


CHAPTER   XL. 


PROGRESS   OF   LOUISIANA. 


On  the  side  of  Spain,  at  the  west  and  south,  Louisiana 
was  held  by  the  French  to  extend  to  the  river  Del  Norte ; 
and,  on  the  map  published  by  the  French  Academy,  the 
line  passing  from  that  river  to  the  ridge  that  divides  it  from 
the  Red  River  followed  that  ridge  to  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
and  then  descended  to  seek  its  termination  in  the  Gulf  of 
California.  At  the  north-west,  where  it  met  the  posses- 
sions of  the  company  of  Hudson's  Bay,  no  commission  had 
fixed  its  limits.  The  British  commissioners,  Bladen  and  the 
younger  Pulteney,  having  repaired  to  Paris  to  adjust  the 
boundaries,  found  only  irreconcilable  differences. 

On  the  east,  the  line  between  Spain  and  France  was  the 
half-way  between  the  Spanish  garrison  at  Pensacola  and 
the  fort  which,  in  1711,  the  French  had  established  on  the 
site  of  the  present  city  of  Mobile  :  with  regard  to  Eng- 
land, Louisiana  was  held  to  embrace  the  whole  valley  of 
the  Mississippi.  Not  a  fountain  bubbled  on  the  west  of 
the  AUeghanies  but  was  claimed  as  being  within  the  French 
empire.  Louisiana  stretched  to  the  head-springs  of  the 
Alleghany  and  the  Monongahela,  of  the  Kanawha  and  the 
Tennessee.  "  Half  a  mile  from  the  head  of  the  southern 
branch  of  the  Savannah  River  is  Herbert's  Spring,  which 
flows  to  the  Mississippi :  strangers,  who  drank  of  it,  would 
say  they  had  tasted  of  French  waters." 

The  centralized  government  of  New  France  acted  with 
promptness ;  and,  before  the  English  government  could 
direct  its  thoughts  to  the  consequences,  the  French  had 
secured  their  influence  on  the  head-springs  of  the  Ohio. 

In  1698,  a  branch  of  the  Shawnees,  offended  with  the 
French,    established    themselves    at   Conestoga ;    in    1700, 


480 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XL. 


"William  Penn  received  them  as  a  part  of  the  people  of 
Pennsylvania;  and  they  scattered  themselves  along  the 
upper  branches  of  the  Delaware  and  the  Susquehannah. 
About  the  year  1724,  the  Delaware  Indians,  for  the  con- 
veniency  of  game,  migrated  to  the  branches  of  the  Ohio  ; 
and,  in  1728,  the  Shawnees  gradually  followed  them.  They 
were  soon  met  by  Canadian  traders ;  and  Joncaii*e,  the 
adopted  citizen  of  the  Seneca  nation,  found  his  way  to  them 
from  Lake  Erie.  The  wily  emissary  invited  their  chiefs  to 
visit  the  governor  at  Montreal ;  and,  in  1730,  they  descended 
with  him  to  the  settlement  at  that  place.  In  the  next  year, 
more  of  them  followed ;  and  the  warriors  of  the  tribe 
put  themselves  under  the  protection  of  Louis  XY.,  having 
hoisted  a  white  flag  in  their  town.  It  was  even  rumored 
that,  in  1731,  the  French  were  building  strong  houses  for 
them.  The  government  of  Canada  annually  sent  them  pres- 
ents and  messages  of  friendship,  and  pursued  the  design  of 
estranging  them  from  the  English. 

The  dangerous  extent  of  the  French  claims  had  for  a  long 
time  attracted  the  attention  of  the  colonies.  To  resist 
mi!  i*  ^^^  ^^^  ^^  t^6  earliest  efforts  of  Spotswood,  who 
hoped  to  extend  the  line  of  the  Virginia  settlements 
far  enough  to  the  west  to  interrupt  the  chain  of  communi- 
cation between  Canada  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  He  caused 
the  passes  in  the  mountains  to  be  examined ;  desired  to  pro- 
mote settlements  beyond  them  ;  and  sought  to  concentrate 
within  his  province  bands  of  friendly  Indians.  Finding 
other  measures  unavailing,  he  planned  the  incorporation  of 
a  Virginia  Indian  company,  which,  from  the  emoluments  of 
a  monopoly  of  the  traffic,  should  sustain  forts  in  the  western 
country.  Disappointed  by  the  determined  opposition  of  the 
people  to  a  privileged  company,  he  was  still  earnest  to  resist 
the  encroachments  of  the  French.  But  from  Williamsburg 
to  Kaskaskia  the  distance  was  too  wide ;  and  though  by  a 
journey  across  the  mountains  the  right  of  Virginia  might 
be  sustained,  yet  no  active  resistance  would  become  possible 
till  the  posts  of  the  two  nations  should  be  nearer.  A  wil- 
derness of  a  thousand  miles  was  a  good  guarantee  against 
reciprocal  invasions. 


1732.  PROGRESS   OF  LOUISIANA.  481 

In  the  more  northern  province  of  Pennsylvania,  the  sub- 
ject never  shinibered.     In  1719,  it  was  earnestly  pressed 
upon  the  attention  of  the  lords  of  trade  by  the  governor  of 
that  colony,  who  counselled  the  establishment  by  Virginia 
of  a  fort  on  Lake  Erie.     But,  after  the  migration  of  the 
Delawares  and  Sliawnees,  James  Logan,  the  mild  and 
estimable  secretary  of   Pennsylvania  could  not  rest       q^^' 
from  remonstrances,  demanding  the  attention  of  the 
proprietary  to  the  ambitious  designs  of  France,  which  ex- 
tended "to  the  heads  of  all  the  tributaries  of  the  Ohio." 
"This,"  he  rightly  added,  "interferes  with  the  five 
degrees  of  longitude  of  this  province ; "  and  the  at-       1732. 
tention  of  the  council  was  solicited  to  the  impending 
danger. 

In  the  autumn  of  1731,  immediately  after  the  establish- 
ment of  Crown  Point,  Logan  prepared  a  memorial  on  the 
state  of  the  British  plantations ;  and  through  Perry,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  British  parliament,  it  was  communicated  to  Sir 
Robert  Walpole.  But  "  the  grand  minister  and  those  about 
him  were  too  solicitously  concerned  for  their  own  standing 
to  lay  any  thing  to  heart  that  was  at  so  great  a  distance." 

In  this  manner,  England  permitted  the  French  to  establish 
their  influence  along  the  banks  of  the  Alleghany  to  the  Ohio. 
They  had  already  quietly  possessed  themselves  of  the  three 
other  great  avenues  from  the  St.  Lawrence  to  the  Missis- 
sippi ;  for  the  route  by  way  of  the  Fox  and  Wisconsin,  they 
had  no  opponents  but  in  the  Sacs  and  Foxes ;  that  by  way 
of  Chicago  had  been  safely  pursued  since  the  days  of  Mar- 
quette ;  and  a  report  on  Indian  affairs,  written  by  Logan,  in 
1718,  proves  that  they  very  early  made  use  of  the  Miami 
of  the  lakes,  and,  after  crossing  the  carrying-place  of  about 
three  leagues,  floated  down  a  shallow  branch  into  the  Wa^ 
bash  and  the  Ohio.  Upon  this  line  of  communication  the 
French  established  a  post ;  and,  of  the  population  of  Yin- 
cennes,  a  large  part  trace  their  lineage  to  early  emigrants 
from  Canada.  Yet  as  of  Kaskaskia,  so  of  Vincennes,  it  has 
not  been  possible  to  fix  the  date  of  its  foundation  with  pre- 
cision. The  hero  whose  name  it  bears  came  to  his  end  in 
1736.     This  route  may  have  been  adopted  at  a  very  early 

VOL.  II.  31 


482  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XL. 

period  after  La  Salle's  return  from  Illinois ;  it  was  in  use 
early  in  the  last  century.  Tradition  preserves  the  memory 
of  a  release,  in  1742,  of  lands,  which,  being  ceded  for  the 
use  of  settlers,  could  not  have  been  granted  till  after  the 
military  post  had  grown  into  a  village  of  Canadian  French. 
It  would  seem  that  in  1716  the  route  was  established,  and, 
in  conformity  to  instructions  from  France,  was  secured  by 
a  military  post.  The  year  1735,  assumed  by  Volney  as  the 
probable  date  of  its  origin,  is  not  too  early;  a  petition  of 
1772  declares  that  it  had  been  established  for  seventy  years. 
Then  began  the  commonwealth  of  Indiana.  Travellers,  as 
they  passed  from  Quebec  to  Mobile  or  New  Orleans,  pitched 
their  tents  on  the  banks  of  the  Wabash ;  till  at  last,  in  1742, 
a  few  families  of  resident  herdsmen  gained  permission  of 
the  natives  to  pasture  their  beeves  on  the  fertile  fields  above 
Blanche  River.  In  1714,  Charleville,  a  French  trader,  is 
said  to  have  established  for  a  time  a  post  for  the  fur-trade 
at  what  is  now  Nashville. 

That  Louisiana  extended  to  the  head-spring  of  the  Alle- 
ghany River,  and  included  the  Laurel  Ridge,  the  Great 
Meadows,  and  every  brook  that  flowed  to  the  Ohio,  was,  on 

the  eve  of  the  treaty  of  Utrecht,  expressly  asserted 
gg^p^       in  the  royal  grant  of  the  commerce  of  the  province. 

Weary  of  fruitless  efforts,  Louis  XIY.  had  assigned 
the  exclusive  trade  of  the  unbounded  territory  to  Anthony 
Crozat,  a  French  merchant,  who  had  "  prospered  in  opu- 
lence to  the  astonishment  of  all  the  world."  La  Motte 
Cadillac,  now  the  royal  governor  of  Louisiana,  became  his 
partner ;  and  the  merchant  proprietary  and  the  founder  of 
Detroit  sought  fortune  by  discovering  mines  and  encroach- 
ing on  the  colonial  monopolies  of  Spain. 

The  latter  attempt  met  with  no  success  whatever.    Hardly 

had  the  officers  of  the  new  administration  landed  at 
JJ^y       Dauphine  Island,  when  a  vessel  was  sent  to  Yera  Cruz ; 

but  it  was  not  allowed  to  dispose  of  its  cargo.  The 
colonial  bigotry  of  Spain  was  strengthened  by  the  political 
jealousy  which  soon  disturbed  the  relations  between  the 
governments  of  Madrid  and  Paris ;  while  the  French  occu- 
pation of  Louisiana  was  itself  esteemed  an  encroachment 


1717.  PROGRESS  OF  LOUISIANA.  483 

on  Spanish  territory.     Every  Spanish  harbor  in  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico  was  closed  against  the  vessels  of  Crozat. 

It  was  next  attempted  to  institute  commercial  relations 
by  land.  Had  they  been  favored,  they  could  not  then  have 
succeeded.  But  when  Saint-Denys,  after  renewing  inter- 
course with  the  Natchitoches,  again  ascended  the  Red  River, 
and  found  bis  way  from  one  Spanish  post  to  another,  till  he 
reached  a  fortress  in  Mexico,  his  enterprise  was  followed  by 
his  imprisonment ;  and  even  liberty  of  commerce  across  the 
wilderness  was  sternly  refused. 

From  the  mines  of  Louisiana  it  was  still  hoped  to  1714. 
obtain  "  great  quantities  of  gold  and  silver ; "  and 
for  many  years  the  hope  agitated  France  with  vague  but 
confident  expectations.  Two  pieces  of  silver  ore,  left  at 
Kaskaskia  by  a  traveller  from  Mexico,  were  exhibited  to 
Cadillac  as  the  produce  of  a  mine  in  Illinois ;  and,  elated 
by  the  seeming  assurance  of  success,  he  hurried  up  the  river, 
to  be  in  his  turn  disappointed,  finding  in  Missouri  abun- 
dance of  the  purest  ore  of  lead,  but  neither  silver  nor 
gold. 

For  the  advancement  of  the  colony,  Crozat  accomplished 
nothing.  The  only  prosperity  which  it  possessed  grew  out 
of  the  enterprise  of  humble  individuals,  who  had  succeeded 
in  instituting  a  little  barter  with  the  natives,  and  a  petty 
trade  with  neighboring  European  settlements.  These  small 
sources  of  prosperity  were  cut  off  by  the  profitless  but  fatal 
monopoly  of  the  Parisian  merchant.  The  Indians  were  too 
numerous  to  be  resisted  by  his  factors.  The  English  grad- 
ually appropriated  the  trade  with  the  natives ;  and  every 
Frenchman  in  Louisiana,  except  his  agents,  fomented  op- 
position to  his  privileges.  Crozat  resigned  his  charter. 
On  receiving  it,  Louisiana  possessed  twenty-eight  French 
families:  in  1717,  when  he  abandoned  it,  the  troops  sent  by 
the  king,  joined  to  the  colonists,  did  not  swell  the  inhab- 
itants of  the  colony  to  more  than  seven  hundred,  including 
persons  of  every  age,  sex,  and  color.  These  few  were 
extended  from  the  neighborhood  of  the  Creeks  to  \]\f 
Natchitoches.  On  the  head-waters  of  the  Alabama, 
at  the  junction  of  the  Coosa  and  the  Tallapoosa,  with  the 


484  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XL. 

aid  of  a  band  of  Choctaws,  Fort  Toulouse,  a  small 
1714.       military  post,  was   built   and   garrisoned.     After  a 

short  period  of  hostilities,  which  sprung  in  part  from 
the  influence  of  English  traders  among  the  Chickasaws,  the 

too  powerful  Bienville  chanted  the  calumet  with  the 
1716.       great  chief  of  the  Natchez ;  and  Fort  Rosalie,  built 

chiefly  by  the  natives,  protected  the  French  com- 
mercial establishment  in  their  village.  Such  was  the  origin 
of  the  city  of  Natchez.  In  the  Mississippi  valley,  it  takes 
rank,  in  point  of  age,  of  every  permanent  settlement  south 
of  Illinois. 

The  monopoly  of  Crozat  was  terminated  by  its  surrender. 
The  mines  and  commerce  of  boundless  Louisiana  were  in- 
voked to  relieve  the  burden  and  renew  the  credit  of  the 
mother  country.  The  human  mind  is  full  of  trust ;  men  in 
masses  always  have  faith  in  the  approach  of  better  times. 
The  valley  of  the  Mississippi  inflamed  the  imagination  of 
France  :  anticipating  the  future,  it  beheld  the  opulence  of 
coming  ages  as  within  immediate  grasp ;  and  John  Law 
obtained  the  control  of  the  commerce  of  Louisiana  and 
Canada. 

The  debt  which  Louis  XIV.  bequeathed  to  his  successor, 
after  arbitrary  reductions,  exceeded  two  milliards  of  livres ; 
and,  to  meet  the  annual  interest  of  eighty  millions,  the  sur- 
plus revenues  of  the  state  did  not  yield  more  than  nine 
millions.  In  this  period  of  depression,  John  Law  proposed 
to  the  regent  a  credit  system,  which  should  liberate  the 
state  from  its  enormous  burden,  not  by  loans  on  which  in- 
terest must  be  paid,  not  by  taxes  that  would  be  burden- 
some to  the  people,  but  by  a  system  which  should  bring  all 
the  money  of  France  on  deposit.  It  was  the  faith  of  Law 
that  the  currency  of  a  country  is  but  the  representative  of 
its  moving  wealth ;  that  this  representative  need  not  possess 
in  itself  an  intrinsic  value,  but  may  be  made  not  of  stamped 
metals  only,  but  of  shells  or  paper ;  that,  where  gold  and 
silver  are  the  only  circulating  medium,  the  wealth  of  a 
nation  may  be  at  once  indefinitely  increased  by  an  arbitrary 
infusion  of  paper ;  that  credit  consists  in  the  excess  of  circu- 
lation over  immediate  resources  ;  and  that  the  advantage  of 


1716.  PROGRESS   OF  LOUISIANA.  485 

credit  is  in  the  direct  ratio  of  that  excess.  Applying  these 
maxims  to  all  France,  he  gradually  planned  the  whimsically 
gigantic  project  of  collecting  all  the  gold  and  silver  of  the 
kin2;dom  into  one  bank.  At  first,  from  his  private  bank, 
having  a  nominal  capital  of  six  million  livres,  of 
which  a  part  was  payable  in  government  notes,  bills  i7i6. 
were  emitted  with  moderation  ;  and,  while  the  des- 
potic government  had  been  arbitrarily  changing  the  value 
of  its  coin,  his  notes,  being  payable  in  coin  at  an  unvarying 
standard  of  weight  and  fineness,  bore  a  small  premium. 
When  Crozat  resigned  the  commerce  of  Louisiana,  it  was 
transferred  to  the  Western  company,  better  known  as 
the  company  of  Mississippi,  instituted  under  the  auspices 
of  Law.  The  stock  of  the  corporation  was  fixed  at  two 
hundred  thousand  shares,  of  five  hundred  livres  each,  to  be 
paid  in  any  certificates  of  public  debt.  Thus  nearly  one 
hundred  millions  of  the  most  depreciated  of  the  public 
stocks  were  suddenly  absorbed,  the  government  changing 
its  obligations  from  an  indebtedness  to  individuals  to  an 
indebtedness  to  a  favored  company  of  its  own  creation. 
Through. the  bank  of  Law,  the  interest  on  the  debt  was  dis- 
charged punctually ;  and,  in  consequence,  the  evidences 
of  debt,  which  were  received  in  payment  for  stock,  rose 
rapidly  from  a  depreciation  of  two  thirds  to  par  value. 
Although  the  union  of  the  bank  with  the  hazards  of  a  com- 
mercial company  was  an  omen  of  the  fate  of  "  the  system," 
public  credit  seemed  restored  as  if  by  a  miracle.  The  ill 
success  of  La  Salle,  of  Iberville,  and  Crozat,  the  fruitless- 
ness  of  the  long  search  for  the  mines  of  St.  Barbe,  were  no- 
torious ;  yet  tales  were  revived  of  the  wealth  of  Louisiana ; 
its  imjots  of  scold  had  been  seen  in  Paris.  The  vision  of  a 
fertile  empire,  with  its  plantations,  manors,  cities,  and  busy 
wharfs,  a  monopoly  of  commerce  throughout  all  French 
North  America,  the  certain  products  of  the  richest  silver 
mines  and  mountains  of  gold,  were  blended  in  the  French 
mind  into  one  boundless  promise  of  treasures.  The  regent, 
who  saw  opening  before  him  unlimited  resources ;  the  no- 
bility, the  churchmen,  who  competed  for  favors  from  the 
privileged  institution  ;    the  stock-jobbers,  including  dukes 


486  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XL. 

and  peers,  marshals  and  bishops,  women  of  rank,  statesmen 
and  courtiers,  —  eager  to  profit  by  the  sudden  and  indefi- 
nite rise  of  stocks,  conspired  to  reverence  Law  as  the  great- 
est man  of  his  age. 

In  September,  1717,  the  Western  company  obtained  its 
grant.  On  the  twenty-fifth  day  of  the  following  August, 
after  a  long  but  happy  voyage,  the  "Victory,"  the  "Duchess 
of  Noailles,"  and  the  "  Mary,"  bearing  eight  hundred  emi- 
grants for  Louisiana,  chanted  their  Te  Deum  as  they  cast 
anchor  near  Dauphine  Island.  Already  had  Bienville, 
1718.  in  the  midsummer  of  1718,  as  he  descended  the  Mis- 
sissippi, selected  on  its  banks  a  site  for  the  capital  of 
the  new  empire ;  and  from  the  prince  who  denied  God,  and 
"  trembled  at  a  star,"  the  dissolute  but  generous  regent  of 
France,  the  promised  city  received  the  name  of  New  Orleans. 
Instead  of  ascending  the  river  in  the  ships,  the  emigrants  dis- 
embarked on  the  crystalline  sands  of  Dauphine  Island,  to 
make  their  way  as  they  could  to  the  lands  that  had  been 
ceded  to  them.  Some  perished  for  want  of  enterprise,  some 
from  the  climate;  others  prospered  by  their  indomitable 
energy.  The  Canadian  Du  Tissenet,  purchasing  a  compass, 
and  taking  an  escort  of  fourteen  Canadians,  went  fearlessly 
from  Dauphine  Island,  by  way  of  the  Mobile  River,  to  Que- 
bec, and  returned  to  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi  with  his 
family.  The  most  successful  colonists  of  Louisiana  were 
hardy  emigrants  from  Canada,  who  brought  with  them  little 
beyond  a  staff  and  the  coarse  clothes  that  covered  them. 

Of  the  recent  emigrants  from  France,  eighty  convicts 
were  sent  amongst  the  coppices  that  overspread  New 
Orleans,  to  prepare  room  for  a  few  tents  and  cottages.  At 
the  end  of  more  than  three  years,  the  place  was  still  a 
wilderness  spot,  where  two  hundred  persons,  sent  to  con- 
struct a  city,  had  but  encamped  among  unsubdued  cane- 
brakes.  And  yet  the  enlightened  traveller  held  America 
happy,  as  the  land  in  which  the  patriot  could  point  to  no 
ruins  of  a  more  prosperous  age ;  and  predicted  the  opulence 
of  the  city  which  promised  to  become  the  emporium  of  the 
noblest  valley  in  the  world.  Still  the  emigrants  of  the 
company,  though  in  the  winter  of  1718  one  of  their  ships 


1722.  PROGRESS   OF  LOUISIANA. 


487 


had  sailed  up  the  river,  blindly  continued  to  disembark  on 
the  coast;  and,  even  in  1721,  Bienville  himself  a  second 
time  established  the  head-quarters  of  Louisiana  at  Biloxi. 

Meantime,  Alberoni,  the  minister  of  Spain,  having,  con- 
trary to  its  interests  and  to  those  of  France,  involved  the 
two  countries  in  a  war,  De  Serigny  arrived  in  Febru- 
ary of  1719,  with  orders  to  take  possession  of  Pensa-       I7i9. 
cola.     This  is  the  bay  called,  in  tlie  days  of  De  Soto,       i558. 
Anchusi,  afterwards  St.  Mary,  and  St.  Mary  of  Galve.       1693. 
In  1696,  Don  Andres  de  Arricla  had  built  upon  its 
margin  a  fort,  a  church,  and  a  few  houses,  in  a  place  without 
commerce  or  agriculture,  or  productive  labor  of  any  kind. 
By  the  capture  of  the  fort,  which  after  five  hours'  resistance 
surrendered,  the  French  hoped  to  extend  their  power 
along  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  from  the  Rio  del  Norte  to  Ma*/ m. 
the  Atlantic.    But  within  forty  days  the  Spaniards  re-  June  29. 
covered  the  town,  and  attempted,  in  their  turn,  to 
conquer  the  French  posts  on  Dauphine  Island  and  on  the 
Mobile.     In    September,  the  French   recovered  Pensacola, 
which,  by  the   treaty  of    1721,   reverted    to    Spain. 
The  tidings  of  peace  were  welcomed  at  Biloxi  with       1722. 
heartfelt  joy. 

During  the  period   of  hostility.  La  Harpe,    in  a     1720. 
letter  to  the  nearest  Spanish  governor,  had  claimed    '^^"^  ^' 
"  Texas  to  the  Del  Norte  as  a  part  of  Louisiana."     France 
was  too  feeble  to  stretch  its  colonies  far  to  the  west ;  but 
its   rights   were   esteemed  so  clear   that,  in  time  of 
peace,  the  attempt  to   occupy  the  country  was  re-       1722. 
newed.     This  second  attempt  of  Bernard  de  la  Harpe 
to  plant  a  colony  near  the  Bay  of  Matagorda  had  no  other 
results  than  to  incense  the  natives  against  the  French,  and 
to  stimulate  the  Spaniards  to  the  occupation  of  the  country 
by  a  fort.     Yet  the  French  regarded    the    mouth   of   the 
Del  Norte  as  the  western  limit  of  Louisiana  on  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico  ;  and  English  geography  recognised  the  claim. 

But  a  change  had  taken  place  in  the  fortunes  of  the 
Mississippi  company.  By  its  connection  with  the  bank  of 
Law,  its  first  attempts  at  colonization  were  conducted  with 
careless  prodigality.     The  richest  prairies,  the  most  invit- 


488  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XL. 

ing  fields,  in  the  southern  valley  of  the  Mississippi,  were 
conceded  to  companies  or  to  individuals  who  sought  prin- 
cipalities in  the  New  World.  Thus  it  was  hoped  that  at 
least  six  thousand  white  colonists  would  be  established  in 
Louisiana.  To  Law  himself  there  was  conceded  a  vast 
prairie  on  the  Arkansas,  where  he  designed  to  plant  a  city 
and  villages.  His  investments  rapidly  amounted  to  a  million 
and  a  half  of  livres.  But  when,  in  1727,  a  Jesuit  priest 
arrived  there,  he  found  only  thirty  needy  Frenchmen, 
who  had  been  abandoned  by  their  employer,  and  had  no 
consolation  but  in  the  blandness  of  the  climate  and  the 
unrivalled  fertility  of  the  soil.  The  decline  of  Louisiana 
was  a  consequence  of  financial  changes  in  France. 
1719.  In  January  of    1719,   the  bank  of   Law  became, 

Jan.  1.  -^y.  ^  negotiation  with  the  regent,  the  Bank  of  France ; 
and  a  government  which  had  almost  absolute  power  of 
legislation  conspired  to  give  the  widest  extension  to  what 
was  called  credit.  "Law  might  have  regulated  at  his 
pleasure  the  interest  of  money,  the  value  of  stocks,  the 
price  of  labor  and  of  produce."  The  contest  between 
paper  and  specie  began  to  rage ;  the  one  buoyed  up  by 
despotic  power,  the  other  appealing  to  common  sense 
Within  four  years,  a  succession  of  decrees  changed  the 
relative  value  of  the  livre  not  less  than  fifty  times,  that, 
from  disgust  at  fluctuation,  paper  at  a  fixed  rate  might  be 
preferred.  All  taxes  were  to  be  collected  in  paper ;  at 
last,  paper  was  made  the  legal  tender  in  all  payments. 
To  win  the  little  gold  and  silver  that  was  hoarded  by  the 
humbler  classes,  small  bills,  as  low  even  as  of  ten  livres, 
were  put  in  circulation.  The  purchase  of  the  bank  by 
the  government  met  less  opposition,  when  a  second  scheme 
was  devised  for  absorbing  its  issues.  Two  kinds  of  paper, 
bills  payable  on  demand  and  certificates  of  stock,  were 
put  abroad  together ;  and  the  stupendous  project  was 
formed  of  paying  off  the  public  debt  in  bank-bills,  to 
absorb  which  new  shares  in  the  Mississippi  company, 
under  its  title  of  Company  of  the  Indies,  were  constantly 
created  and  offered  for  sale.  The  extravagance  of  hope 
was   nourished   by  the    successive   surrender   to  that   cor- 


1720.  PROGRESS  OF  LOUISIANA.  489 

poration  of  additional  monopolies,  —  the  trade  in  Africans, 
the  trade  on  the  Indian  seas,  the  sale  of  tobacco,  the  prof- 
its of  the  royal  mint,  tlie  profits  of  farming  the  whole  rev- 
enue of  France,  —  till  a  promise  of  a  dividend  of  forty  per 
cent,  from  a  company  which  had  the  custody  of  the  reve- 
nues and  the  benefit  of  the  commerce  of  France, '  obtained 
belief,  and  the  shares,  which  might  be  issued  after  a  payment 
of  a  first  instalment  of  five  hundred  livres,  rose  in  price  a 
thousand  per  cent.  Avarice  became  a  frenzy ;  its  fury  seized 
every  member  of  the  royal  family,  men  of  letters,  prelates, 
women.  Early  in  the  morning,  the  exchange  opened  with 
beat  of  drum  and  sound  of  bell,  and  closed  at  night  on 
avidity  that  could  not  slumber.  To  doubt  the  wealth  of 
Louisiana  provoked  anger.  New  Orleans  was  famous  at 
Paris  as  a  city  almost  before  the  canebrakes  began  to  be 
cut  down.  The  hypocrisy  of  manners,  which  in  the  old 
age  of  Louis  XIV.  made  religion  become  a  fashion,  re- 
volted to  libertinism  ;  and  licentious  pleasure  was  become 
the  parent  of  an  equally  licentious  cupidity.  Thus  the  re- 
gent, purchasing  directly  of  the  company  a  share  for  five 
hundred  livres,  was  able  to  sell  it  at  a  great  advance,  per- 
haps for  five  thousand.  The  public  creditor  paid  virtually 
ten  livres  of  public  debt  for  one  livre  of  the  stock,  and, 
instead  of  holding  government  securities,  became  a  stock- 
holder in  an  untried  company.  In  this  manner,  in  the 
course  of  sixteen  months,  more  than  two  milliards  were 
emitted  ;  and  the  regent's  mother  could  write  that  "  all 
the  king's  debts  were  paid."  The  extravagances  of  stock- 
jobbing were  increased  by  the  latent  distrust  alike  of  the 
shares  and  of  the  bills ;  men  purchased  stock  because  they 
feared  the  end  of  the  paper  system,  and  because  with  the 
bills  they  could  purchase  nothing  else.  The  wrong  soon 
became  apparent ;  the  parliament  protested  that  private 
persons  were  by  the  system  defrauded  of  three  fifths 
of  their  income.  To  stifle  doubt.  Law,  who  had  j^^\ 
made  himself  a  Catholic,  was  appointed  comptroller- 
general  ;  and  the  new  minister  of  finance  perfected  Feb.  27. 
the  triumph  of  paper  by  a  decree  that  no  person  or 
corporation  should  have  on  hand  more  than  five  hundred 


490  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Ciiap.  XL. 

livres  in  specie  ;  the  rest  must  be  exchanged  for  paper,  and 
all  payments,  except  for  sums  under  one  hundred  livres, 
must  be  paid  in  paper.     Terror  and  the  dread  of  informers 

brought,  within  three  weeks,  forty-four  millions  into 
Man^ii.  t^®  bank.     In  March,  a  decree  of  council  fixed  the 

value  of  the  stock  at  nine  thousand  livres  for  five 
hundred,  and  fi)rbade  certain  corporations  to  invest  money 
in  any  thing  else;  all  circulation  of  gold  and  silver,  except 
for  change,  was  prohibited ;  all  payments  must  be  made  in 
paper,  except  for  sums  under  ten  livres.  He  who  should 
have    attempted   to  convert  a  bill  into  specie  would  have 

exposed  his  specie  to  forfeiture  and  himself  to  fines. 
May  21.  Confidence  disappeared,  and  in  May  bankruptcy  was 

avowed  by  a  decree  Avhich  reduced  the  value  of 
bank-notes  by  a  moiety.  When  men  are  greatly  in  the 
wrong,  and  especially  when  they  have  embarked  their  for- 
tunes in  their  error,  they  wilfully  resist  light.  So  it  had 
been  with  the  French  people  :  they  remained  faithful  to 
their  delusion,  till  France  was  impoverished,  public  and 
private  credit  subverted,  the  income  of  capitalists  anni- 
hilated, and  labor  left  without  employment;  while,  in  the 
midst  of  the  universal  wretchedness  of  the  middling  class, 
a  few  wary  speculators  gloried  in  the  unjust  acquisition 
and  enjoyment  of  immense  wealth. 

Such  was  the  issue  of  Law's  celebrated  system,  which 
left  to  the  world  a  lesson  the  world  was  slow  to  learn  :  that 
the  enlargement  of  the  circulation  quickens  industry  so  long 
only  as  the  enlargement  continues,  for  prices  then  rise,  and 
every  kind  of  labor  is  remunerated ;  that  when  this  increase 
springs  from  artificial  causes,  it  must  meet  with  a  check, 
and  be  followed  by  a  reaction ;  that  when  the  reaction 
begins,  the  high  remunerating  prices  decline,  labor  fails  to 
find  an  equivalent,  and  each  evil  opposite  to  the  previous 
advantages  ensues ;  that  therefore  every  artificial  expansion 
of  the  currency,  every  expansion  resting  on  credit  alone,  is 
a  source  of  confusion  and  ultimate  loss  to  the  community, 
and  brings  benefits  to  none  but  to  those  who  are  skilf  id  in 
foreseeing  and  profiting  by  the  fluctuations.  The  chan- 
cellor D'Aguesseau,  who  was  driven  from  ofiice  because  he 


1722.  PROGRESS  OF  LOUISIANA.  491 

could  show  no  favor  to  the  system,  was,  after  a  short  period 
of  retirement,  restored  to  greater  honors  than  before,  and 
lives  in  memory  as  a  tolerant  and  incorruj^tible  statesman ; 
while  those  who  yielded  to  the  reckless  promises  of  Law 
have  been  rescued  from  infamy  only  by  oblivion. 

The  downfall  of  Law  abruptly  curtailed  expenditures  for 
Louisiana.  But  a  colony  was  already  planted,  destined  to 
survive  all  dangers,  even  though  in  France  Louisiana  was 
involved  in  disgrace.  Instead  of  the  splendid  visions  of 
opulence,  the  disenchanted  public  would  now  see  only 
unwholesome  marshes,  which  were  the  tombs  of  emigrants ; 
its  name  was  a  name  of  disgust  and  terror.  The 
garrison  at  Fort  Toulouse  revolted ;  and,  of  the  sol-  1722. 
diers,  six-and-twenty  departed  for  the  English  set- 
tlements of  Carolina.  Overtaken  by  Villemont  with  a 
body  of  Choctaws,  the  unhappy  wretches  Avere  in  part 
massacred,  in  part  conducted  to  Mobile  and  executed. 
Even  the  wilderness  could  not  moderate  the  barbarisms 
of  military  discipline. 

The  Alabama  River  had  been  a  favorite  line  of  commu- 
nication with  the  north.  From  the  easier  connection  of 
Mobile  with  the  sea,  it  remained  a  principal  post ;  but,  in 
August  of  1723,  the  quarters  of  Bienville  were  transferred 
to  New  Orleans,  where  the  central  point  of  French  power, 
after  hovering  round  Ship  Island  and  Dauphine  Island,  the 
Bays  of  Biloxi  and  Mobile,  was  at  last  established.  The 
emigrants  to  Arkansas  removed  to  lands  on  the  river  nearer 
that  city. 

The  villages  of  the  Natchez,  planted  in  the  midst  of  the 
most  fertile  climes  of  the  south-west,  rose  near  the  banks 
of  the  Mississippi.  Each  was  distinguished  by  a  receptacle 
for  the  dead.  In  the  sacred  building,  of  an  oval  shape, 
having  a  circumference  of  one  hundred  feet,  —  a  simple  hut, 
without  a  window,  and  with  a  low  and  narrow  opening  on 
the  side  for  the  only  door,  —  were  garnered  up  the  choicest 
fetiches  of  the  tribe,  of  which  some  were  moulded  of  sun- 
baked clay.  There,  too,  were  gathered  the  bones  of  the 
dead ;  there  an  undying  fire  was  kept  burning  by  appointed 
guardians,  as  if  to  warm  and  light  and  cheer  the  departed. 


492  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XL. 

On  the  palisades  around  this  edifice,  which  has  been  called 
a  temple,  the  ghastly  trophies  of  victories  were  arranged. 
Once,  when  during  a  storm  the  sacred  edifice  caught  fire 
from  the  lightning,  seven  or  eight  mothers  won  the  ap- 
plause of  the  terror-stricken  tribes  by  casting  their  babes 
into  the  flames,  to  appease  the  unknown  power  of  evil. 

The  grand  chief  of  the  tribe  was  revered  as  of  the  family 
of  the  sun,  and  he  could  trace  his  descent  with  certainty 
from  the  nobles ;  for  the  inheritance  of  power  was  trans- 
mitted exclusively  by  the  female  line.  Hard  by  the  temple, 
on  an  artificial  mound  of  earth,  stood  the  hut  of  the  Great 
Sun :  around  it  were  grouped  the  cabins  of  the  tribe. 
There,  for  untold  years,  the  savage  had  won  his  bride  by  a 
purchase  from  her  father ;  had  placed  his  trust  in  his  man- 
itous ;  had  turned  at  daybreak  towards  the  east,  to  hail 
and  worship  the  -beams  of  morning ;  had  listened  to  the 
revelations  of  dreams ;  had  invoked  the  aid  of  the  medicine 
men  to  dance  the  medicine  dance;  had  achieved  titles  of 
honor  by  prowess  in  war ;  had  tortured  and  burnt  his  pris- 
oners. There  were  the  fields  which,  in  spring,  the  whole 
tribe  had  gone  forth  to  cultivate ;  there  the  scenes  of  glad 
festivals  at  the  gathering  of  the  harvest ;  there  the  natural 
amphitheatres,  where  councils  were  convened,  and  embassies 
received,  and  the  calumet  of  reconciliation  jDassed  in  cere- 
mony from  lip  to  lip.  There  the  dead  had  been  arrayed  in 
their  proudest  apparel;  the  baskets  of  food  for  the  first 
month  after  death  set  apart  for  their  nurture ;  the  requiem 
chanted  by  the  women  in  mournful  strains  over  their  bones ; 
and  there,  when  a  great  chief  died,  persons  of  the  same  age 
were  strangled,  that  they  might  constitute  his  escort  into 
the  realm  of  shades. 

Nowhere  was  the  power  of  the  grand  chieftain  so  nearly 
despotic.  The  race  of  nobles  was  so  distinct  that  usage 
had  moulded  language  into  forms  of  reverence.  In  other 
respects,  there  was  among  the  Natchez  no  greater  culture 
than  among  the  Choctaws;  and  their  manners  hardly  dif- 
fered from  those  of  northern  tribes,  except  as  they  were 
modified  by  climate. 

The   French,   who   were   cantoned  among  the  Natchez, 


1729.  PROGRESS   OF  LOUISIANA.  493 

coveted  their  soil;  the  commander,  Chopart,  swayed  by  a 
brutal  avarice,  demanded  as  a  plantation  the  very  site  of 
their  principal  village.  The  tribe  listened  to  the  counsels  of 
the  Chickasaws ;  they  gained  in  part  the  support  of  the 
Choctaws  ;  and  a  general  massacre  of  the  intruders 
was  concerted.  On  the  morning  of  the  twenty-eighth  ^ly%^^ 
of  November,  1729,  the  work  of  blood  began,  and 
before  noon  nearly  every  Frenchman  in  the  colony  was 
murdered. 

The  Great  Sun,  taking  his  seat  under  the  storehouse  of 
the  company,  smoked  the  calumet  in  complacency,  as  the 
head  of  Chopart  was  laid  at  his  feet.  One  after  another, 
the  heads  of  the  principal  officers  at  the  post  were  ranged 
in  order  around  it,  while  their  bodies  were  left  abroad  to  be 
a  prey  to  dogs  and  buzzards.  At  that  time,  the  Jesuit  Du 
Poisson  was  the  missionary  among  the  Arkansas.  Two 
years  before,  he  had  made  his  way  up  the  Mississippi  from 
New  Orleans.  On  each  of  the  nearest  plantations  which  he 
saw  in  his  progress,  bands  of  sixty  negroes  had  succeeded 
in  cultivating  maize,  tobacco,  indigo,  and  rice.  His  com- 
panions, as  they  advanced,  now  dragged  the  boat  along 
shore,  now  stemmed  the  torrent  by  rowing.  At  niglit, 
they  made  a  resting-place  by  spreading  canvas  over  boughs 
of  trees  heaped  together  on  the  miry  bank  ;  or,  making 
their  boat  fast  to  some  raft  that,  covering  many  roods,  had 
floated  down  the  stream  till  it  became  entangled  in  the  roots 
of  trees  overthrown  but  not  wholly  loosened  from  the  soil, 
they  would  upon  the  raft  itself  kindle  their  evening  fire  and 
prepare  their  meal ;  or,  toiling  through  the  mud  and  forests 
and  canes,  they  would  intrude  on  the  hospitality  of  some 
petty  chief  in  the  morasses  ;  or  would  seek  out,  as  at  Point 
Coupee,  some  French  settler,  who,  amidst  the  giant  forests, 
had  raised  a  cabin  on  piles.  Thus  the  pilgrim  had  ascended 
the  Mississippi,  now  drinking  the  turbid  but  wholesome 
waters  with  a  reed  ;  now  tasting  the  wild  and  as  yet  unripe 
grapes,  which  grew  by  the  banks  of  the  river;  now  hiding 
from  the  clouds  of  mosquitoes  beneath  a  stifling  awning; 
now  accompanied  in  the  boat  by  one  army  of  insects,  and, 
as  he  passed  near  a  coppice  of  willows  or  a  canebrake,  over- 


494  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XL. 

whelmed  by  another ;  till  he  reached  the  prairies  that  had 
been  selected  for  the  plantations  of  Law,  and  smoked  the 

calumet  with  the  southernmost  tribes  of  the  Dakotas. 
Nav.^26.  Desiring  to  plan  a  settlement  near  the  margin  of  the 

Mississippi,  he  had  touched  at  Natchez  in  search  of 
counsel,  had  preached  on  the  first  Sunday  in  advent,  had 
visited  the  sick,  and  was  returning  with  the  host  from  the 
cabin  of  the  dying  man,  when  he,  too,  was  struck  to  the 
ground,  and  beheaded.  The  Arkansas,  hearing  of  his  end, 
vowed  that  they  would  avenge  him  with  a  vengeance  that 
should  never  be  appeased.  Du  Codere,  the  commander  of 
the  post  among  the  Yazoos,  who  had  drawn  his  sword  to 
defend  the  missionary,  was  himself  killed  by  a  musket-ball, 
and  scalped  because  his  hair  was  long  and  beautiful.  The 
planter  De  Koli,  a  Swiss  by  birth,  one  of  the  most  worthy 
members  of  the  colony,  had  come  with  his  son  to  take  pos- 
session of  a  tract  of  land  on  St.  Catharine's  Creek ;  and 
both  were  shot.  The  Capuchin  missionary  among  the 
Natchez,  returning  from  an  accidental  absence,  was  shot 
near  his  cabin,  and  a  negro  slave  by  his  side.  Two  white 
men,  both  mechanics,  and  two  only,  were  saved.  The 
number  of  victims  was  reckoned  at  two  hundred.  Women 
were  spared  for  menial  services ;  children,  as  captives. 
When  the  work  of  death  was  finished,  pillage  and  carousals 
began. 

The  news  spread  <3ismay  in  New  Orleans.  Messengers 
were  sent  with  the  tidings  to  the  Illinois,  by  way  of  the 
Red  River,  and  to  the  Choctaws  and  Cherokees.  Each 
house  was  supplied  with  arms  ;  the  city  fortified  by  a  ditch. 
Danger  appeared  on  every  side.  The  negroes,  of  whom 
the  number  was  about  two  thousand,  half  as  many  as  the 
French,  showed  symptoms  of  revolt.  But  the  brave,  enter- 
prising Le  Sueur  won  the  Choctaws  to  his  aid,  and  was 
followed  across  the  country  by  seven  hundred  of  their  war- 
riors. On  the  river,  the  forces  of  the  French  were  assem- 
bled, and  placed  under  the  command  of  Loubois. 

Le  Sueur  was  the  first  to  arrive  in  the  vicinity  of 

1730.  .  . 

the  Natchez.     On  the  evening  of  the  twenty-eighth 
of  January,  they  gave  themselves  up  to  sleep,  after  a  day 


1732.  PROGRESS   OF  LOUISIANA.  495 

of  festivity.  On  the  following  morning  at  daybreak,  the 
Choctaws  broke  upon  their  villages,  liberated  their  cap- 
tives, and,  losing  but  two  of  their  own  men,  brought  of£ 
sixty  scalps  with  eighteen  prisoners. 

On  the  eighth  of  February,  Loubois  arrived,  and      1730. 
completed  the  victory.     Of  the  Natchez,  some  fled  to    ^®^'  ^' 
neighboring  tribes  for  shelter ;  the  remainder  of  the  nation 
crossed  the  Mississippi  to  the  vicinity  of  Natchitoches. 
They  were  pursued,  and  partly  by  stratagem,  partly       1731. 
by  force,  their  place  of  refuge  was  taken.     Some  fled 
still  farther  to  the  west.     Of  the  scattered  remnants,  some 
remained  with  the  Chickasaws  ;  others  found  a  shel- 
ter anion g:  the  Muskohojees.     The    Great    Sun    and       1732. 
more  than  four  hundred  prisoners  were  shipped  to 
Hispaniola,  and  sold  as  slaves. 

Thus  perished  the  nation  of  the  Natchez.  Their  peculiar 
language,  their  worship,  their  division  into  nobles  and  ple- 
beians, their  bloody  funereal  rites,  and  with  these  differences 
their  close  resemblance  in  character  to  other  tribes  on  the 
valley  of  the  Mississippi,  provoke  conjecture ;  but  the  ac- 
counts which  we  have  respecting  them  are  so  meagre,  and 
so  wanting  in  scientific  exactness,  that  they  do  but  irritate, 
without  satisfying,  curiosity. 

The  cost  of  defending  Louisiana  exceeding  the  returns 
from  its  commerce  and  from  grants  of  land,  tlie  company 
of  the  Indies,  seeking  wealth  by  conquests  or  traflic  on  the^ 
coast  of  Guinea  and  Hindostan,  solicited  leave  to  surrender 
the  Mississippi  wilderness ;  and  on  the  tenth  of  April,  1732, 
the  jurisdiction  and  control  over  its  commerce  reverted  to 
the  crown  of  France.  The  company  had  held  possession  of 
Louisiana  for  fourteen  years,  which  were  its  only  years  of 
comparative  prosperity.  The  early  extravagant  hopes  had 
not  subsided  till  emigrants  had  reached  its  soil ;  and  the 
emigrants,  being  once  established,  took  care  of  themselves. 
In  1735,  the  Canadian  Bienville  reappeared  to  assume  the 
command  for  the  king. 

It  was  the  first  object  of  the  crown  to  establish  its  suprem- 
acy in  Louisiana.  The  Chickasaws  were  the  dreaded  ene- 
mies of  France ;  it  was  they  who  had  hurried  the  Natchez  to 


496 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XL. 


bloodshed  and  destruction  ;  it  was  they  whose  cedar  barks, 
shooting  boldly  into  the  Mississippi,  interrupted  the  con- 
nection between  Kaskaskia  and  New  Orleans.  They  main- 
tained their  savage  independence,  and  weakened  by  dividing 
the  French  empire.  They  made  all  settlements  on  the  east- 
ern bank  of  the  Mississippi  unsafe  from  Natchez,  or  even 
from  the  vicinity  of  New  Orleans,  to  Kaskaskia.  The  Eng- 
lish traders  from  Carolina  were  moreover  welcomed  to  their 
villages.  Nay,  more  :  resolute  in  their  hatred,  they  even 
endeavored  to  debauch  the  affections  of  the  Illinois,  and  to 
extirpate  French  dominion  from  the  west.  But  the  tawny 
envoys  from  the  north  descended  to  New  Orleans,  and  pre- 
sented the  pipe  of  friendship.  "  This,"  said  Chicago  to 
Perrier,  as  he  concluded  an  offensive  and  defensive  alli- 
ance, "this  is  the  pipe  of  peace  or  war.  You  have  but 
to  speak,  and  our  braves  will  strike  the  nations  that  are 
your  foes." 

To  secure  the  eastern  valley  of  the  Mississippi,  it 

was  necessary  to  reduce  the  Chickasaws ;  and  nearly 
two  years  were  devoted  to  preparations  for  the  enterprise. 
At  last,  in  1736,  the  whole  force  of  the  colony  at  the  south, 
w^ith  D'Artaguette  and  troops  from  his  command  in  Illinois, 
and  probably  from  the  Wabash,  was  directed  to  meet  on 
the  tenth  of  May  in  their  land.  The  government  of  France 
had  itself  given  directions  for  the  invasion,  and  watched  the 
issue  of  the  strife. 

From  New  Orleans,  the  fleet  of  thirty  boats  and  as 

many  pirogues  departed  for  Fort  Conde  at  Mobile, 
which  it  did  not  leave  till  the  fourth  of  April.  In  sixteen 
days,  it  ascended  the  river  to  Tombigbee,  a  fort  which  an 
advanced  party  had  constructed  on  the  west  bank  of  the 
river,  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  above  the  bay.  Of  the 
men  employed  in  its  construction,  some  attempted  to  escape 
and  enjoy  the  liberty  of  the  wilderness :  in  the  wilds  of 
Alabama,  a  court-martial  sentenced  them  to  death,  and  they 
were  shot. 

The  Choctaws,  lured  by  gifts  of  merchandise  and  high 
rewards  for  every  scalp,  gathered  at  Fort  Tombigbee  to 
aid  Bienville.      Of  these  red  auxiliaries,  the  number  was 


1736.  PROGRESS  OF  LOUISIANA.  497 

about  twelve  hundred  ;  and  the  whole  party  slowly 
sounded  its  way  up  the  windings  of  the  Tombigbee  May 
to  the  point  where  Cotton  Gin  Port  now  stands,  and 
which  was  but  about  twenty-one  miles  south-east  of  the 
great  village  of  the  Chickasaws.  There  the  artillery  was 
deposited  in  a  temporary  fortification ;  and  the  forests  and. 
prairies  between  the  head-sources  of  the  Tombigbee  and 
the  Tallahatchie  were  disturbed  by  the  march  of  the  army 
towards  the  long  house  of  their  enemy.  After  the  man- 
ner of  Indian  warfare,  they  encamped,  on  the  even- 
ing of  the  twenty-fifth  of  May,  at  the  distance  of  a  May  25. 
league  from  the  village.  In  the  morning,  before  day, 
they  advanced  to  surprise  the  Chickasaws.  In  vain.  The 
brave  warriors,  whom  they  had  come  to  destroy,  were  on 
the  watch  ;  their  intrenchments  were  strong ;  English  flags 
waved  over  their  fort ;  English  traders  had  assisted  them 
in  preparing  defence.  Twice,  during  the  day,  an  attempt 
was  made  to  storm  their  log  citadel ;  and  twice  the  French 
were  repelled,  with  a  loss  of  thirty  killed,  of  whom  four 
were  officers.  The  next  day  saw  skirmishes  between  par- 
ties of  Choctaws  and  Chickasaws.  On  the  twenty-ninth, 
the  final  retreat  began ;  on  the  thirty-first  of  May,  Bienville 
dismissed  the  Choctaws,  having  satisfied  them  with  pres- 
ents, and,  throwing  his  cannon  into  the  Tombigbee,  his 
party  ingloriously  floated  down  the  river.  In  the  last  days 
of  June,  he  landed  on  the  banks  of  the  bayou  St.  John. 

But  where  was  D'Artaguette,  the  brave  commander  in 
the  Illinois,  the  pride  of  Canada?  And  where  the  gallant 
Vincennes,  whose  name  is  borne  by  the  oldest  settlement 
of  Indiana? 

The  young  D'Artaguette  had  gained  glory  in  the  war 
against  the  Natchez,  braving  death  under  every  form.  Ad- 
vanced to  the  command  in  the  Illinois,  he  obeyed  the  sum- 
mons of  Bienville  ;  and,  with  an  army  of  about  fifty  French 
soldiers  and  more  than  a  thousand  red  men,  accompanied 
by  Father  Senat  and  by  the  Canadian  De  Vincennes,  the 
careful  hero  stole  cautiously  and  unobserved  into  the 
country  of  the  Chickasaws,  and,  on  the  evening  before  May  9. 
the  appointed  day,  encamped  near  the  rendezvous 
VOL.  II.  82 


498  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XL. 

among  the  sources   of  the  Yalabusha.     But  the  expected 
army  from  below  did  not  arrive.     For  ten  days  he  retained 

his  impatient  allies  in  the  vicinity  of  their  enemy ;  at 
May^20.  ^^^^'  ^^  they  menaced  desertion,  he  consented  to  an 

attack.  His  measures  were  wisely  arranged.  One 
fort  was  carried,  and  the  Chickasaws  driven  from  the  cabins 
which  it  protected ;  at  the  second,  the  intrepid  youth  was 
equally  successful ;  on  attacking  the  third  fort,  he  received 
one  wound,  and  then  another,  and  in  the  moment  of  victory 
was  disabled.  The  red  men  from  Illinois,  dismayed  at  the 
check,  fled  precipitately.  Voisin,  a  lad  of  but  sixteen  years, 
conducted  the  retreat  of  the  French,  having  the  enemy  at 
his  heels  for  five-and-twenty  leagues,  marching  forty-five 
leagues  without  food,  while  his  men  carried  with  them  such 
of  the  wounded  as  could  bear  the  fatigue.  The  unhappy 
D'Artaguette  was  left  weltering  in  his  blood,  and  by  his 
side  lay  others  of  his  bravest  troops.  The  Jesuit  Senat 
might  have  fled :  he  remained  to  receive  the  last  sigh  of  the 
wounded,  regardless  of  danger,  mindful  only  of  duty.  Yin- 
cennes,  too,  the  Canadian,  refused  to  fly,  and  shared  the 
captivity  of  his  gallant  leader.  After  the  Indian  custom, 
their  wounds  were  stanched ;  they  were  received  into  the 
cabins  of  the  Chickasaws,  and  feasted  bountifully.  At  last, 
when  Bienville  had  retreated,  the  captives  were  brought 
into  a  field ;  and,  while  one  was  spared  to  relate  the  deed, 
the  adventurous  D'Artaguette,  the  faithful  Senat,  true  to 
his  mission,  Vincennes,  whose  name  will  be  perpetuated  as 
long  as  the  Wabash  shall  flow  by  the  dwellings  of  civilized 
man,  —  these,  with  the  rest  of  the  captives,  were  bound  to 
the  stake,  and  neither  valor  nor  piety  could  save  them  from 
death  by  slow  torments  and  fire.  Such  is  the  early  history 
of  the  state  of  Mississippi. 

Ill  success  did  but  increase  the  disposition  to  con- 
1737.       tinue  the  war.     To  advance  the  colony,  a  royal  edict 

of  1737  permitted  a  ten  years'  freedom  of  commerce 
between  the  West  India  Islands  and  Louisiana ;  while  a 
new  expedition  against  the  Chickasaws,  receiving  aid  not 

from  Illinois  only,  but  even  from  Montreal  and 
1739.       Quebec,  and  from  France,  made  its  rendezvous  in 


1739.  PKOGRESS   OF  LOUISIANA.  499 

Arkansas,  on  the  St.  Francis  River.  In  the  last  of  June, 
the  whole  army,  composed  of  twelve  hundred  whites  and 
twice  that  number  of  red  and  black  men,  took  up  its  quar- 
ters in  Fort  Assumption,  on  the  bluff  of  Memphis.  But  the 
recruits  from  France  and  the  Canadians  languished  in  the 
climate.  When  in  March,  1740,  a  small  detachment  pro- 
ceeded towards  the  Chickasaw  country,  they  were  met  by 
messengers,  who  supplicated  for  peace ;  and  Bienville  gladly 
accepted  the  calumet.  The  fort  at  Memphis  was  razed; 
the  troops  from  Illinois  and  from  Canada  drew  back ;  the 
fort  on  the  St.  Francis  was  dismantled  ;  and  Bienville  re- 
turned, to  conceal  his  shame  under  false  pretences.  Peace, 
it  was  said,  was  established  between  France  and  the  Chick- 
asaws ;  but  the  settlements  between  lower  Louisiana  and 
the  Illinois  were  interrupted.  From  Kaskaskia  to  Baton 
Rouge  was  a  wilderness,  in  which  the  jurisdiction  of  France 
was  but  a  name.  The  French  were  kept  out  of  the  country 
of  the  Chickasaws  by  that  nation  itself ;  red  men  protected 
the  English  settlements  on  the  west. 

The  population  of  Louisiana,  more  than  a  half-century 
after  the  first  attempt  at  colonization  by  La  Salle,  may  have 
been  five  thousand  whites  and  half  that  number  of  blacks. 
Louis  XIV.  had  fostered  it  with  pride  and  liberal  expendi- 
tures ;  an  opulent  merchant,  famed  for  his  successful  enter- 
prise, assumed  its  direction ;  the  company  of  the  Mississippi, 
aided  by  boundless  but  transient  credit,  had  made  it  the 
foundation  of  their  hopes ;  and,  again,  Fleury  and  Louis  XV. 
had  sought  to  advance  its  fortunes.  Priests  and  friars,  dis- 
persed through  nations  from  Biloxi  to  the  Dakotas,  propi- 
tiated the  favor  of  the  savages.  Yet  all  its  patrons,  though 
among  them  it  counted  kings  and  ministers  of  state,  had  not 
brought  to  it  a  tithe  of  the  prosperity  which,  within  the 
same  period,  grew  out  of  the  benevolence  of  William  Penn 
to  the  peaceful  settlers  on  the  Delaware. 


500  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 


CHAPTER  XLI. 

TWENTY-SIX   TEARS    OF    COLONIAL   ADMINISTRATION    UNDER 
THE    HOUSE    OP    HANOYER. 

At  the  accession  of  George  I.,  the  continental  colonies 
counted  three  hundred  and  seventy-five  thousand 
1714.  seven  hundred  and  fifty  white  inhabitants,  and  fifty- 
eight  thousand  eight  hundred  and  fifty  black,  —  in 
all,  four  hundred  and  thirty-four  thousand  six  hundred  souls ; 
and  were  increasing  with  unexampled  rapidity.  The  value 
of  their  imports  from  England,  on  an  average  of  the  first 
three  years  of  George  I.,  was  a  little  less  than  two  millions 
of  dollars ;  of  their  exports,  a  little  less  than  seventeen  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars ;  their  domestic  commerce  equalled 
that  with  England  ;  their  trade  with  the  British  and  foreign 
West  Indies,  the  Azores,  and  the  continent  of  Europe,  ex- 
ceeded both.  They  had  founded  institutions  like  those  at 
home ;  and  the  house  of  Hanover  was  to  them  the  symbol 
and  the  guarantee  of  liberty. 

The  menacing  mandates  of  the  last  reign  had  but  in- 
creased the  ill-humor  of  New  York.  The  first  assembly 
elected  under  the  new  dynasty  accepted  a  compromise. 
The  government  was  provided  with  a  revenue  for  a  period 
of  five  years  ;  in  return,  the  governor,  disregarding  the  pre- 
rogative and  his  instructions,  assented  to  a  general  act  of 
naturalization,  as  well  as  to  imposts  on  negroes  and  on  Brit- 
ish goods ;  and  came  to  an  agreement  with  them  on  the 
salaries  of  the  oflicers  of  the  crown. 

The  English  lawyers  of  that  day  had  no  doubt  of  the 
power  of  parliament  to  tax  America.  The  first  ministry  of 
George  I.  inquired  into  the  expense  of  the  cruisers  which 
defended  American  commerce,  being  disposed  to  transfer 


1718.  THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  I.  501 

the  burden  of  their  support  to  America.  "  The  plantation 
duties,"  as  they  were  called,  fruits  of  the  tax  imposed  in 
1672  on  the  intercolonial  trade,  and  which  during  the  war 
had  yielded  an  annual  average  of  a  thousand  pounds, 
having  been  appropriated  as  a  fund  for  borrowing,  were 
ordered  to  be  paid  into  the  exchequer;  while  the  income 
from  the  post-office  was  applied  "towards  the  support  of 
the  dignity  of  the  crown." 

The  king  could  urge  the  governors  to  prevent  "illegal 
trade  with  the  French  settlements;"  but  when  it  was 
proposed  to  check  "  the  mischief "  of  the  proprietary  gov- 
ernments, "their  charters,"  said  the  attorney-general,  Sir 
Edward  Northey,  in  strict  conformity  to  the  doctrines  of 
the  Revolution  of  1688,  "  their  charters  cannot  be  regulated 
but  by  an  act  of  the  supreme  legislature."  Such  regulation 
was  the  settled  policy  of  the  board  of  trade ;  men  high  in 
office  insisted  that  colonial  charters  were  not  irrevo- 
cable compacts,  but  affairs  of  state,  subject  to  the  ^g!^ 
will  of  parliament ;  and,  early  in  the  session  of  1715, 
a  bill  for  their  change  was  proposed  in  the  house  of  com- 
mons. The  agent  of  Massachusetts  remonstrated ;  but,  in 
that  colony,  youthful  republicanism  was  already  eager  to  try 
the  strength  of  its  wing  ;  and  despising  the  guileless  imbe- 
cility of  Shute,  its  royal  governor,  it  counteracted  the  com- 
mercial monopoly  of  England,  and  encroached  steadily  on 
the  prerogative.  In  1716,  against  the  royal  intention,  a  new 
emission  of  paper  bills,  to  be  loaned  through  the  counties, 
depreciated  the  currency.  The  pine-trees  in  the  forests  of 
Maine  were  claimed  to  belong  to  the  colony,  under  the  pur- 
chase from  Gorges,  which  was  older  than  the  new  charter ; 
and  when  in  November,  1717,  the  decisive  statutes  of  Queen 
Anne  were  cited  to  the  representatives  of  Massachusetts, 
"  acts  of  parliament,"  it  was  promptly  answered  in 
public  debates,  "  are  of  no  force  with  us,  as  we  have  1718. 
a  charter."  English  lawyers  reasoned  differently; 
and  the  board  of  trade  advised  "  a  scire  facias  to  be  brought 
against  the  Massachusetts  patent."  In  May,  1718,  the  same 
province  imposed  a  duty  on  English  manufactures,  and, 
as  its   own  citizens  built   six   thousand   tons   of   shipping 


502  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 

annually,  favored  their  industry  by  a  small  discriminating 
duty.  "  In  a  little  time,"  it  was  said  of  them,  with  alarm, 
"  they  will  be  able  to  live  without  Great  Britain  ;  and 
their  ability,  joined  to  their  inclination,  will  be  of  very 
ill  consequence."  The  impost  on  English  goods,  though  of 
but  one  per  cent,  was  negatived  by  the  king,  with  the 
warning  "  that  the  passage  of  such  acts  endangers  the 
charter." 

The  British  nation  took  no  part  in  the  strifes  between 
the  governors  and  the  colonies  ;  but  they  were  jealously 
alive  to  the  interests  of  their  own  commerce  and  manufac- 
tures. That  the  British  creditor  might  be  secure,  lands  in 
the  plantations  were,  by  act  of  parliament,  made  liable  for 
debts.  Every  branch  of  consumption  was,  as  far  as  prac- 
ticable, secured  to  English  manufacturers;  every  form  of 
competition  in  industry,  in  the  heart  of  the  plantations,  was 
discouraged  or  forbidden.  In  the  land  of  furs,  it  was  found 
that  hats  were  well  made :  the  London  company  of  hatters 
remonstrated  ;  and  their  craft  was  protected  by  an  act  for- 
bidding hats  to  be  transported  from  one  plantation  to  an- 
other. The  proprietors  of  English  iron  works  were 
1719.  jealous  of  American  industry.  From  Shute,  in  1719, 
news  came  that,  in  some  parts  of  Massachusetts, 
"  the  inhabitants  worked  up  their  wool  and  flax,  and  made 
a  coarse  sort  for  their  own  use;  that  they  manufactured 
great  part  of  their  leather ;  that  there  were  also  hatters  in 
the  maritime  towns ;  and  that  six  furnaces  and  nineteen 
forges  were  set  up  for  making  iron."  These  six  furnaces 
and  nineteen  forges  were  a  terror  to  England,  and  their 
spectres  haunted  the  public  imagination  for  a  quarter  of 
a  century.  The  house  of  commons  readily  resolved  that 
"  the  erecting  manufactories  in  the  colonies  tended  to  lessen 
their  dependence  ; "  and,  under  pretence  of  encouraging  the 
importation  of  American  lumber,  they  passed  a  bill  having 
the  clause,  "  that  none  in  the  plantations  should  manufact- 
ure iron  wares  of  any  kind  out  of  any  sows,  pigs,  or  bars 
whatsoever."  The  house  of  lords  added,  "  that  no  forge, 
going  by  water,  or  other  works  should  be  erected  in  any  of 
the  said  plantations,  for  the  making,  working,  or  converting 


1719.  THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  I.  503 

of  any  sows,  pigs,  or  cast-iron  into  bar  or  rod  iron."  The 
opposition  of  the  northern  colonies  defeated  the.  bill ;  Eng- 
land would  not  yet  forbid  the  colonists  to  manufacture 
a  bolt  or  a  nail;  but  the  purpose  was  never  abandoned. 
"  Some  talk  of  an  act  of  parliament,"  observed  the  mildly 
conservative  Logan,  in  1728,  "  to  prohibit  our  making  bar 
iron,  even  for  our  own  use.  Scarce  any  thing  could  more 
effectually  alienate  the  minds  of  the  people  in  these  parts, 
and  shake  their  dependence  upon  Britain." 

To  the  affairs  of  colonial  administration  the  parliament 
was  more  indifferent.  In  1719,  the  proprietary  government 
of  Carolina  was  overthrown  by  the  rising  of  the  province ; 
and  though  the  board  of  trade  was  warned  that,  "if  the 
much  greater  part  of  the  most  substantial  people  had 
their  choice,  they  would  not  choose  King  George's  govern- 
ment ;  "  though  Rhet,  the  receiver  of  the  revenues,  wrote 
from  Charleston,  that,  "  if  the  recent  revolt  of  the  people  is 
not  cropped  in  the  bud,  they  will  set  up  for  themselves 
against  his  majesty,"  —  the  insurrection  was  adopted  by  the 
crown ;  and  Carolina,  accepting  the  king  as  an  ally,  received 
a  governor  of  royal  appointment. 

The  love  of  popular  power  was  active  in  every  colony. 
In  Pennsylvania,  the  assembly,  which  gave  the  governor 
his  pay,  kept  him  on  his  good  behavior  ;  they  authorized 
aliens  to  purchase  lands,  and  "  to  trade  and  transport  mer- 
chandise." Twice  in  the  administration  of  Sir  William 
Keith,  they  framed  their  declaration  of  privileges,  which 
was  twice  rejected  in  England ;  they  regulated  aj^peals  to 
the  privy  council,  imposed  discriminating  taxes  on  the 
vessels  of  British  merchants,  and  set  a  prohibitory  duty  on 
the  introduction  of  convicts.  In  Virginia,  Drysdale,  who 
was  Spotswood's  successor,  resolved  never  to  use  the  veto. 
In  1722,  he  accepted  an  act,  imposing  a  considerable  duty 
on  the  importation  of  liquors  and  slaves ;  but  the  interest  of 
the  African  company  procured  its  repeal  in  England.  The 
men  of  New  Jersey  were  described  as  "  mostly  from  New 
England,  uneasy  in  their  nature,  fond  of  delusions,  ene- 
mies to  the  public  peace."  "  Whoever  commands,"  wrote 
Hunter,  in  November,  1719, "  can  do  little  else  than  threaten, 


504  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 

unless  he  has  aid  from  without."  Fifteen  months  later, 
"William  Burnet,  Hunter's  successor  in  the  government  of 
New  York  and  New  Jersey,  found  "  the  latter  province  full 
of  restless  men  ;  too  many  would  be  glad  to  have  no  officers 
in  the  colony,  nor  even  a  ruler,  unless  of  their  own  appoint- 
ment." In  New  York,  the  first  years  of  Burnet's  adminis- 
tration were  embittered  by  the  effort  to  secure  to  Horatio 
Walpole,  brother  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  a  sinecure  per- 
quisite, as  auditor-general,  of  five  per  cent  of  the  colonial 
revenue.  In  most  of  the  colonies,  paper  money  was  multi- 
plied so  lavishly  that,  in  1720,  an  instruction,  afterwards 
modified,  but  never  abrogated,  was  issued  to  every  gov- 
ernor in  America,  to  consent  to  no  act  for  emitting  bills 
of  credit,  except  for  the  support  of  government,  without 
a  suspending  clause  till  the  king's  pleasure  should  be 
known. 

In  Massachusetts,  Shute,  the  governor,  against  his  inten- 
tions fell  into  strife  with  the  province.  To  prevent  the  pub- 
lication of  an  answer  by  the  house  to  one  of  his  speeches,  he 
claimed  under  his  instructions  power  over  the  press,  with  no 
other  result  than  that  from  that  time  the  press  in  Massachu- 
setts became  free.  The  legislature  would  never  vote  him  a 
fixed  salary,  but  only  such  a  grant  as  his  good  offices  might 
seem  to  them  to  merit.  The  governor  negatived  the  choice 
to  the  council  of  Elisha  Cooke,  the  younger,  heir  to  his 
father's  virtues,  like  him  the  firm  friend  of  New  England's 
liberties ;  Cooke  was  promptly  chosen  a  representative  of 
Boston,  and  in  1720  was  elected  speaker  of  the  house.  The 
governor  disapproved  the  appointment ;  the  house  treated 
his  disapproval  as  a  nullity.  The  governor  dissolved  the 
assembly ;  and,  in  July,  the  new  representatives  punished 
him  by  reducing  his  half-year's  gratuity  from  six  hundred 
to  five  hundred  pounds  in  a  depreciating  currency.  In  the 
following  November,  they  virtually  assumed  the  prerogative 
of  declaring  war  against  the  eastern  Indians,  appointed  "  one 
or  more  meet  persons  "  to  have  an  inspection  into  foits  and 

garrisons  and  the  condition  of  the  forces,  and  again 
1721.       curtailed   the   governor's   salary.      In    March,  1721, 

from  the  mere  pleasure  of   exercising  power,  they 


1721.  THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  I.  505 

took  to  themselves  the  appointment  of  the  annual  fast; 
in  May,  they  would  not  ask  the  governor's  assent  to  their 
choice  of  speaker,  and  refused  to  make  any  grants  of  money 
for  public  salaries,  until  the  governor  should  accept  their 
acts,  resolves,  and  elections.  "  They  are  more  fit  for  the 
affairs  of  farming,"  wrote  Shute,  "  than  for  the  duty  of 
legislators  ;  they  show  no  regard  to  the  royal  prerogative 
or  instructions."  The  ministry  "  would  not  be  persuaded 
but  that  New  England  wanted  to  be  independent  of  the 
crown ; "  and  Martin  Bladen,  who  was  the  successor  of  Ad- 
dison, and  exercised  great  influence  at  the  board  of  trade 
for  nineteen  years,  often  expressed  his  conviction  that  "  the 
colonies  desired  to  set  up  for  themselves."  Horatio  Wal- 
pole  burned  with  anger  at  Massachusetts,  because,  like  New 
York,  it  rejected  his  sinecure  demands. 

At  that  time.  Sir  Robert  Walpole  had  attained  the  undis- 
puted direction  of  English  affairs.  Of  the  American  colo- 
nies he  knew  little  ;  but  they  profited  by  the  character  of  a 
statesman  who  shunned  measures  that  might  provoke  an 
insurrection,  and  rejected  every  proposition  for  revenue 
that  required  the  sabre  and  bayonet  for  its  collection.  The 
legislation  of  1721,  the  ripened  results  of  reflection,  show 
the  character  of  his  mind  and  his  counsels  as  a  statesman. 
It  was  his  purpose  to  make  England  the  home  of  the  indus- 
trial arts,  with  the  world  for  its  market.  Export  duties  on 
all  goods  of  British  produce  were  abolished ;  thus  gaining 
for  mankind  some  advance  towards  freedom  of  intercourse. 
The  British  colonial  monopoly  was  confirmed.  In  the 
seventh  year  of  George  I.,  the  importation  of  East  Indian 
goods  into  the  colonies  was  prohibited,  except  from  Great 
Britain ;  and  thus  the  colonists  virtually  paid  on  them  the 
duties  retained  on  their  exportation.  Furs  from  the  plan- 
tations were  now  enumerated  ;  so,  too,  ore  from  the  abun- 
dant copper  mines  of  America.  The  reservation  of  the 
pine-trees  of  the  north  for  the  British  navy  was  renewed; 
and  the  jurisdiction  of  the  court  of  vice-admiralty  extended 
to  offenders  against  the  act.  The  bounties  on  hemp  and 
naval  stores  were  renewed,  and  wood  and  lumber  from  the 
colonies  were  made  free. 


506 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 


On  reform  in  the  administration  of  the  colonies,  the 
board  of  trade,  after  long  and  anxious  inquiry,  in 
Sept.  September,  1721,  made  an  elaborate  representation. 
With  sentiments  of  exultation,  they  entered  on  the 
statistics  of  colonial  commerce ;  they  eagerly  adopted  every 
view  which  magnified  its  importance.  They  found  that  it 
gave  in  favor  of  Great  Britain  a  yearly  balance  of  two  hun- 
dred thousand  pounds;  that  it  directly  employed,  on  an 
annual  average,  seventy-five  thousand  five  hundred  and 
eighty-seven  tons,  or  one  sixth  of  the  whole  national  ton- 
nage; and  they  added  that,  on  a  fair  estimate  of  indirect 
advantages,  the  colonies  employed  one  fourth,  or  perhaps 
even  one  third,  of  the  whole  navigation  of  Great  Britain. 
These  views  were  received  as  the  results  of  exact  inquiries, 
and  formed  the  motive  to  the  policy  of  succeeding  years. 
They  seemed  to  justify  the  boast  of  a  colonial  agent,  "  that 
London  had  risen  out  of  the  plantations,  and  not  out  of 
England." 

Having  thus  directed  the  royal  attention  to  the  state  of 
the  plantations  and  the  importance  of  their  trade  to  the  king- 
dom, the  board  gave  warning  against  French  encroachments. 
They  expressed  their  regret  that,  in  all  Nova  Scotia,  there 
were  but  two  English  families  besides  the  garrison  of  An- 
napolis ;  they  complained  that  near  three  thousand  French 
inhabitants  remained  in  that  colony,  without  taking  the  oath 
of  allegiance ;  they  reminded  the  king  that  "  the  French 
now,  in  time  of  profound  peace  and  friendship  between  the 
two  nations,  pretended  that  only  the  peninsula  of  Acadia 
was  yielded  to  the  crown  of  Great  Britain  by  the  treaty  of 
Utrecht,"  and  they  advised  to  send  four  regiments  to  Nova 
Scotia.  For  the  west,  they  proposed  to  occupy  all  the 
passes  of  the  Alleghanies,  and  to  build  and  garrison  many 
forts,  especially  at  Niagara,  on  Lake  Erie,  and  on  the  river 
which  we  call  Cumberland. 

With  the  Indians  they  enforced  the  necessity  of  extend- 
ing commercial  and  friendly  relations  ;  yet  deplored  that 
"the  presents  to  the  chiefs,  particularly  to  those  of  the 
Five  Nations,  have  always  hitherto  been  a  charge  upon  the 
civil  list,  which  is  generally  overburdened." 


1721.  THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  I.  507 

The  liberties  of  the  colonies  weighed  less  than  the  per- 
quisites of  a  favorite.  Their  refusal  of  emoluments  to  Ho- 
ratio Walpole,  as  auditor-general,  was  censured,  as  a  crime 
against  royal  authority  and  a  step  towards  independence. 

How  to  get  an  American  revenue  at  the  royal  dispo- 
sition remained  a  problem.  Addison,  when  secretary  of 
state,  had  asked  "  an  account  of  the  royal  revenue  in  the 
colonies."  In  a  report  made  in  February,  1719,  at  the 
command  of  the  board  of  trade.  Sir  William  Keith  of 
Pennsylvania,  in  concert  with  the  more  discreet  Logan, 
explained  the  rapid  progress  of  the  French,  proposed  a 
system  of  frontier  defence,  and  enforced  the  "  necessity 
that  some  method  be  projected  whereby  each  colony  shall 
be  obliged  to  bear  its  proportionable  share  of  expense." 
To  accomplish  this  end,  the  board  of  trade  now  formally 
brought  forward  a  new  system  of  colonial  administration 
by  a  concentration  of  power  over  the  colonies  alike  in 
England  and  in  America.  By  an  order  in  council,  of  Oc- 
tober, 1714,  the  privy  council,  or  any  three  or  more  of 
them,  were  appointed  "  a  committee  for  hearing  of  appeals 
from  the  plantations,  and  other  matters  that  shall  be  re- 
ferred to  them."  So  that  the  board  of  trade,  deprived  of 
its  influence  and  of  its  ambition,  became  reduced  "  to  a 
commission  of  mere  reference  and  report."  After  seven 
years'  experience  of  the  disregard  of  their  instructions 
which  they  had  no  means  to  enforce,  they  now  urged 
that  the  first  commissioner  of  their  board,  like  the  first 
lord  of  the  treasury  and  of  the  admiralty,  should  have  im- 
mediate access  to  the  sovereign.  As  "  the  most  effectual 
way  "  of  ruling  in  America,  they  proposed  to  consolidate  all 
the  continental  provinces  under  the  government  of  one  lord 
lieutenant  or  captain-general,  who  should  have  a  fixed 
salary  independent  of  the  pleasure  of  the  inhabitants,  and 
should  be  constantly  attended  by  two  members  of  each  pro- 
vincial assembly ;  one  of  the  two  to  be  elected  every  year. 
This  general  council  might  "  not  meddle  with  or  alter  the 
manner  of  government  in  any  province,"  but  should  have 
power  to  allot  to  each  one  its  quota  of  men  and  money, 
which  the  several  assemblies  would  then  raise  by  laws. 


508  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 

The  charter  governments  had  been  repeatedly  in  immi- 
nent peril.  It  was  said  of  them  that  they  had  neglected 
the  defence  of  the  country  ;  had  exercised  power  arbitrarily ; 
had  disregarded  the  acts  of  trade  ;  had  made  laws  repug- 
nant to  English  legislation  ;  and  by  fostering  the  numbers 
and  wealth  of  their  inhabitants  were  creating  formidable 
antagonists  to  English  industry.  Moreover,  "  too  great  an 
inclination  was  shown  by  them  to  be  independent  of  their 
mother  kingdom."  The  board  of  trade  therefore  advised 
*'that  they  all  should  be  reassumed  to  the  crown,  as  one 
of  those  essential  points  without  which  the  colonies  could 
never  be  put  upon  a  right  footing ; "  and  that  "  they  should 
next  be  compelled  by  proper  laws  to  follow  the  commands 
sent  them.  It  hath  ever,"  they  added,  "  been  the  wisdom 
not  only  of  Great  Britain,  but  likewise  of  all  other  states, 
to  secure  by  all  possible  means  the  entire,  absolute,  and 
immediate  dependency  of  their  colonies."  And  they  pressed 
for  the  instant  adoption  of  their  scheme,  which,  like  that 
of  1696,  had  some  features  of  a  military  dictatorship.  It 
seemed  "  past  all  doubt  that  a  bill  would  be  brought  into 
the  house  of  commons  at  their  next  session  to  disfranchise 
the  charter  governments." 

At  this  moment  of  danger,  Jeremiah  Dummer,  a  native 
of  Boston,  a  graduate  of  Harvard  College,  now  agent  of 
Massachusetts,  came  forward  in  behalf  of  the  ^ew  Eng- 
land charters,  menaced  alike  by  an  act  of  parliament  and 
by  a  vast  exertion  of  the  prerogative.  In  their  "  Defence," 
of  which  Lord  Carteret,  afterwards  Earl  of  Granville,  ac- 
cepted the  dedication,  he  argued  that  the  three  New  Eng- 
land colonies  held  their  charters  by  compact,  having  obtained 
them  as  a  consideration  for  the  labor  of  those  who  re- 
deemed the  wilderness  and  annexed  it  to  the  English  do- 
minions ;  that  the  charters  did  but  establish  the  political 
question  between  the  colonies  and  Great  Britain ;  that  the 
crown,  having  itself  no  right  in  the  soil,  neither  did  nor 
could  grant  it ;  that  the  Americans  held  their  lands  by  pur- 
chases from  the  natives  and  their  own  industry  and  daring ; 
that,  if  the  planters  had  foreseen  that  their  privileges  would 
be  such  transitory  things,  they  never  would  have  engaged 


1721.  THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  I. 


509 


in  their  costly  and  hazardous  enterprise ;  that,  but  for  them, 
France  would  have  multiplied  its  settlements  till  she  had 
reigned  sole  mistress  of  North  America ;  that,  far  from 
neglecting  their  defence,  the  glorious  deeds  of  their  sol- 
diers, if  they  must  not  shine  in  British  annals,  would  con- 
secrate their  memory  in  their  own  country,  and  there,  at 
least,  transmit  their  fame  to  the  latest  posterity ;  that  the 
charters  themselves  contained  the  strongest  barriers  against 
arbitrary  rule,  in  the  annual  election  of  magistrates ;  that 
violations  of  the  acts  of  navigation,  which  equally  occurred 
in  every  British  seaport,  were  the  frauds  of  individuals, 
not  the  fault  of  the  community  ;  that,  in  the  existing  state 
of  things,  all  the  officers  of  the  revenue  were  appointed  by 
the  crown,  and  all  breaches  of  the  acts  of  trade  cognizable 
only  in  the  court  of  admiralty ;  that  colonial  laws,  repug- 
nant to  those  of  England,  far  from  effecting  a  forfeiture 
of  the  charters,  were  of  themselves,  by  act  of  parliament, 
illegal,  null,  and  void  ;  that  the  crown  had  no  interest  to 
resume  the  charters,  since  it  could  derive  no  benefit  but 
from  the  trade  of  the  colonies,  and  the  nursery  of  trade  is 
a  free  government,  where  the  laws  are  sacred  ;  that  jus- 
tice absolutely  forbade  a  bill  of  attainder  against  the  lib- 
erties of  states;  that  it  would  be  a  severity  without  a 
precedent,  if  a  people  should  in  one  day,  unsummoned 
and  unheard,  be  deprived  of  all  the  valuable  privileges  which 
they  and  their  fathers  had  enjoyed  for  near  a  hundred 
years.  And  as  the  plan  of  the  board  of  trade  was  recom- 
mended by  the  fear  that  the  colonies  would,  "  in  the  course 
of  some  years,  throw  off  their  dependence  and  declare  them- 
selves a  free  state,"  as  men  in  office  "  professed  their  belief 
of  the  feasibleness  of  it,  and  the  probability  of  its  some 
time  coming  to  pass,"  he  set  forth  that  the  colonies  would 
not  be  able  to  succeed  in  the  undertaking,  "  unless  they  could 
first  strengthen  themselves  by  a  confederacy  of  all  the 
parts;"  and  that  their  independence  would  be  hastened, 
if  "  all  the  governments  on  the  continent  be  formed  into 
one,  by  being  brought  under  one  viceroy  and  into  one  as- 
sembly." 

Such  were  the  arguments   urged  by  Dummer,  of  New 


510  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLI 

England,  who,  "  in  the  scarcity  of  friends  to  those  govern- 
ments," gained  a  tongue  to  assert  the  liberties  of  his 
country.  His  writings  were  the  fruit  of  loyal  colonial 
liberty,  and  they  contain  the  seed  of  American  independence. 
Yet  it  was  not  then  perceived  that,  though  the  charters 
should  be  burnt,  freedom  itself  would  rise  from  their  ashes 
in  forms  more  beautiful  than  before.  The  bill  for  abrogat- 
ing them  was  dropped.  ■  The  good  sense  of  the  Earl  of 
Stair,  who  was  selected  to  be  the  viceroy  of  America,  hav- 
ing declined  the  station,  the  scheme  of  the  board  of 
1722.  trade  was  allowed  to  slumber.  In  1722,  the  liberal 
Trenchard,  whose  words  were  very  widely  read  and 
sunk  deeply  into  the  American  mind,  foresaw  that  "the 
colonies  when  they  grew  stronger  might  attempt  to  wean 
themselves,"  and  for  that  very  reason  counselled  moderation 
and  forbearance.  "  It  is  not  to  be  hoped,"  thus  he  reasoned 
publicly  and  wisely,  "  that  any  nation  will  be  subject  to 
another  any  longer  than  it  finds  its  own  account  in  it  and 
cannot  help  itself.  Our  northern  colonies  must  constantly 
increase  in  people,  wealth,  and  power.  They  have  doubled 
their  inhabitants  since  the  revolution,  and  in  less  than  a 
century  must  become  powerful  states  ;  and  the  more  power- 
ful they  grow,  still  the  more  people  will  flock  thither.  And 
there  are  so  many  exigencies  in  all  states,  so  many  foreign 
wars  and  domestic  disturbances,  that  these  colonies  can 
never  want  opportunities,  if  they  watch  for  them,  to  do 
what  they  shall  find  it  their  interest  to  do  ;  and,  therefore, 
we  ought  to  take  all  the  precaution  in  our  power  that  it 
shall  never  be  their  interest  to  act  against  that  of  their 
native  country." 

The  words  of  Trenchard  were  still  fresh  in  the 

1723 

public  ear,  when  suddenly  the  governor  of  Massachu- 
setts appeared  in  England,  having  fled  secretly  and  abruptly 
from  his  government.  He  came  to  complain  to  the  king  of 
the  representatives  who  had  trampled  on  the  prerogative, 
had  adjourned  against  his  will,  had  assembled  again  at  their 
own  appointed  time,  and  had  gained  to  themselves  a  con- 
trol over  the  movements  of  colonial  troops  and  the  appoint- 
ment of  their  commanders.     Especially  he  complained  of 


1723.  THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  I.  511 

"Boston,  a  town  of  eighteen  thousand  inhabitants."  Its 
liberties  were  described  as  the  want  "  of  proper  police  ; "  its 
ardent  love  of  freedom,  as  "  a  levelling  spirit ; "  the  conduct 
of  its  citizens  as  an  aptitude  "to  be  mutinous;"  its  influ- 
ence, as  swaying  the  country  representatives  "  to  make  con- 
tinual encroachments  on  the  few  prerogatives  left  to  the 
crown."  "  The  cry  of  the  city  of  London  was  exceedingly 
against "  the  people  of  Massachusetts ;  it  was  feared  that 
the  spirit  of  1641  still  lived  beyond  the  Atlantic ;  and  even 
Neal,  the  historian  and  friend  of  New  England,  censured 
the  patriot  Elisha  Cooke,  as  endangering  the  charter.  The 
board  of  trade  saw  high  treason  in  the  interference  of  the 
assembly  with  the  militia ;  they  reported  to  the  lords  of 
council  that  "the  inhabitants  were  daily  endeavoring  to 
wrest  the  small  remains  of  power  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
crown,  and  to  become  independent  of  the  mother  kingdom." 
To  make  the  danger  apparent,  they  recounted  the  populous- 
ness  of  the  province,  the  strength  of  its  militia,  the  number 
of  its  mariners ;  they  apprised  the  privy  council  of  the  im- 
portance of  restraining  "  so  powerful  a  colony  within  due 
bounds  of  obedience  to  the  crown ; "  and,  as  the  only  rem- 
edy, they  demanded,  without  loss  of  time,  "the  effectual 
interposition  of  the  British  legislature." 

At  a  moment  when  the  administration  of  the  colonies 
was  fraught  with  so  many  difliculties,  Walpole  conferred 
the  management  of  them  with  the  seals  of  the  southern 
department  of  state  on  the  young  Duke  of  Newcastle,  who 
owed  his  consequence  to  his  wealth  and  the  number  of 
members  of  parliament  dependent  on  him  for  their  return. 
As  a  politician,  he  was  like  the  stream  that  cuts  its  channel 
through  the  line  of  the  least  resistance.  Importuned  to  dis- 
tribute places  in  America,  he  conferred  oflice  without  a  scru- 
ple on  men  too  vile  to  be  employed  at  home,  and  then  left 
them  very  much  to  look  out  for  themselves.  His  method 
of  transacting  business  was  exactly  suited  to  smother  the 
violent  dispositions  of  the  board  of  trade. 

On  occasion  of  a  vehement  strife  in  Jamaica,  the  crown 
lawyers  were  asked  if  the  king  or  his  privy  council  had 
not  a  right  to  levy  taxes  upon  the  inhabitants  of  Jamaica; 


512  COLONIAL  HISTOKY.  Chap.  XLL 

1724,  ^nd  in  May,  1724,  Sir  Philip  Yorke,  afterwards  Lord 
^*y-  Hardwicke,  and  Sir  Clement  Wearg  made  the  reply 
which,  at  a  later  day,  impressed  itself  deeply  on  the  mind 
of  Lord  Mansfield.  "  If  Jamaica  is  to  be  considered  as  a 
colony  of  English  subjects,  they  cannot  be  taxed  but  by 
the  parliament  of  Great  Britain,  or  some  representative 
body  of  the  people  of  the  island."  On  the  question  that 
had  been  raised  in  Massachusetts,  the  same  great  lawyers 
gave  a  calm  report,  deciding  every  question  against  the  col- 
ony, yet  not  encouraging  harsh  measures  of  redress.  The 
Duke  of  Newcastle  evaded  the  true  issue.  Leaving  the  de- 
spised instructions  respecting  revenue  to  remain  unaltered, 
he  ventured,  on  the  power  of  the  assembly  to  choose  its 
speaker  and  to  adjourn  itself,  to  make  such  explanations  of 
the  charter  of  Massachusetts  as  the  assembly  were  willing 
to  accept ;  the  arrears  of  salary  due  from  that  refractory 
people  to  the  fugitive  Shute  he  settled  by  a  pension  out  of 
the  revenue  of  Barbados,  which  thus  found  out  how  unwise 
it  had  been  in  granting  the  crown  a  permanent  revenue. 

In  May,  1726,  the  New  York  assembly,  which  had 

been  continued  more  than  eleven  years,  came  together 
in  ill-humor.  Burnet  had  sedulously  endeavored  to  obtain 
payment  of  Horatio  Walpole's  sinecure  ;  to  prevent  its  pay- 
ment in  future,  the  assembly,  in  their  periodical  grant  settled 
what  offices  were  necessary,  and  limited  their  emoluments. 
Morris,  whose  annual  grant  as  chief  justice  was'  reduced, 
questioned  the  conduct  of  the  assembly  as  an  invasion  of 
the  prerogative;  to  that  body,  of  which  he  was  himself  a 
member,  he  denied  all  "innate  power,"  deducing  their  priv- 
ilege of  legislation  from  the  king's  good-will  alone.  And  he 
appealed  to  the  ministry  against  the  "  example,  mischievous 
to  the  rest  of  the  plantations,  and  of  tendency  to  shake  off 
dependence  on  the  British  government." 

Burnet  was  distinguished  for  his  fidelity  to  his  employers ; 
but,  on  the  accession  of  George  II.,  his  merit  did  not  pre- 
vent his  transfer  to  the  less  desirable  government  of  Massa- 
chusetts. 

To  the  government  of  New  York,  at  the  very  time 

when  the  ministry  were  warned  that  "  the  American 


1728.  THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  II.  513 

assemblies  aimed  at  nothing  less  than  being  independent  of 
Great  Britain  as  fast  as  they  can,"  Newcastle  sent  the  igno- 
rant and  intemperate  John  Montgomery.  Weak  and  slug- 
gish, yet  kindly  and  humane,  the  pauper  chief  magistrate 
had  no  object  in  America  but  money ;  and  being  the  most 
bashful  man  in  the  colony,  and  diffident  of  himself,  he 
escaped  strife  in  New  York  and  New  Jersey  by  never 
resisting  their  assemblies. 

While  Burnet  with  a  heavy  heart  repaired  to  Massachu^ 
setts,  Sir  William  Keith,  formerly  surveyor  of  the  customs 
for  the  southern  department,  afterwards  governor  of  Penn- 
sylvania for  nine  years,  then  a  fiery  patriot,  boisterous  for 
liberty  and  property,  by  which  he  meant  more  paper 
money,  was  used  as  the  organ  in  London  for  suggest-  J/^J; 
ing  a  new  plan  of  colonial  administration.  None  of 
the  plantations,  he  held,  could  "  claim  an  absolute  legislative 
power  within  themselves,  none  could  evade  the  true  force  of 
any  act  of  parliament  affecting  them."  To  give  unity  and 
vigor  to  the  colonial  government,  he  repeated  the  advice  of 
the  board  of  trade  to  make  its  first  lord  a  secretary  of  state ; 
and,  as  a  measure  for  a  revenue,  submitted  to  the  king  the 
inquiry,  "  whether  the  duties  of  stamps  upon  parchment  and 
paper  in  England  may  not,  with  good  reason,  be  extended 
by  act  of  parliament  to  all  the  American  plantations."  The 
suggestion,  which  probably  was  not  original  with  Keith, 
met  at  the  time  with  no  favor  from  the  commissioners  of 
trade.  Meanwhile,  Burnet,  who  honestly  and  single-handed 
obeyed  his  instructions,  demanded  of  the  Massachusetts 
legislature  a  stated  annual  salary.  The  legislature  refused 
to  modify  the  constitution  by  relinquishing  any  part  of  their 
power  over  the  annual  appropriations  ;  and,  by  forbidding 
their  adjournment,  the  governor  sought  to  weary  them  into 
an  assent.  The  rustic  patriots  scorned  "  to  betray  the 
great  trust  reposed  in  them  by  their  principals."  Burnet 
hinted  that  the  parliament  of  England  might  be  invoked 
as  arbiter  of  the  strife,  and  the  charter  of  Massachusetts  be 
dissolved  by  its  act.  The  representatives  at  once  appealed 
to  their  constituents,  transmitting  a  statement  of  the  con- 
troversy to  the  several  towns  in  the  colony.  Boston,  in 
VOL.  II.  83 


514 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 


town-meeting,  with  Jonathan  Belcher  as  moderator,  unani- 
mously applauded  the  refusal  to  fix  a  salary.     To 
Oct^.    escape  the  influence  of  that  town,  the  general  court 
was  adjourned  to  Salem.     In  vain  did  Burnet  strive 
to  force  the  legislature  into  compliance,  by  arbitrarily  sub- 
jecting them  to  inconvenience.     They  sent  Belcher  as  their 
patriot  envoy  to  plead  their  cause  in  England.    At  the  same 
time,  Burnet  again  and  again  begged  for  the  interposition 
of  parliament,  to  "  rebuke  the  daring  encroachments  on  the 
prerogative,"  to  "  resent  the  conduct  of  the  insuffer- 
1729.       ably  arrogant;"  and,  in  March,  1729,  he  declared  to 
Newcastle  "  that  some  of  the  British  forces  would  be 
necessary  to  keep  the   people   of  his  province  within  the 
bounds  of  their  duty."     To  make  "  the  people  respect  the 
government,"  it   was  proposed  "to  send   an   independent 
company  to  take  possession  of  the  fort  in  the  harbor  of  Bos- 
ton."    Cosby,  of  New  York,  wrote  to  Newcastle  that  "the 
Boston  people  were  sj)irited  up  by  Pulteney  and  that  faction 
at  home." 

Massachusetts  defended  itself  openly  without  disguise. 
Its  able  counsel,  Fazakeley  and  Sayer,  argued  that  it  was 
right  for  the  governor  and  colonial  ofiicers  to  depend  for 
their  support  on  the  good-will  of  the  provincial  legis- 
May22.  lature.  But  in  May,  1729,  the  privy  council,  in  the 
presence  of  Queen  Charlotte,  agreed  that  such  de- 
pendence weakened  the  royal  authority,  "by  bringing  the 
whole  legislative  power  into  the  hands  of  the  people  ;"  and 
they  concurred  with  the  board  of  trade  in  advising  the  king 
"to  lay  the  whole  matter  before  the  parliament  of  Great 
Britain." 

The  board  of  trade  reproved  the  conduct  of  the  house ; 
the  agents  of  Massachusetts  advised  concession,  lest  parlia- 
ment should  interfere  ;  but  the  representatives  answered : 
"  It  is  better  that  the  liberties  of  the  people  should  be  taken 
from  them  than  given  up  by  themselves."  In  a  public 
letter  to  Burnet,  Newcastle  assumed  an  air  of  firmness, 
which  deceived  no  one  ;  and,  having  done  all  he  could  to 
intimidate,  in  a  private  letter  of  June,  1729,  the  secretary 
permitted  him,  "  as  if  of  his  own  motion,"  to  demand  only 


1729.  THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  II.  515 

"  an  allowance  during  his  own  government,"  leaving  vic- 
tory to  the  strong  will  of  Massachusetts. 

The  assembly  received  the  opinion  of  the  privy  coun- 
cil with  "  the  utmost  insensibility."  "  Their  principles  of 
independence,"  wrote  Burnet,  in  July,  "  are  too  deeply 
rooted  to  be  managed  by  any  thing  but  the  legislature  of 
Great  Britain."  And,  exhausted  by  the  conflict  and  heart- 
broken by  poverty,  he  died  suddenly  of  an  accidental  in- 
jury in  the  following  September. 

The  field  was  now  open  for  Newcastle's  favorite  policy. 
The  colonial  agent,  the  sly,  shrewd  Belcher,  whose  piety 
was  of  the  most  perfect  pattern  of  observance,  whose  quiet 
cunning  could  smooth  every  obstacle  to  his  interest,  re- 
turned from  his  embassy  with  a  commission  to  govern 
Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire.  His  patron.  Lord 
Townshend,  the  other  secretary  of  state,  whose  grandson 
was  within  twenty  years  to  engage  in  the  same  questions, 
asked  if  Belcher  could  influence  the  people  to  comply  with 
the  instructions.  The  ministry  were  already  assured  from 
Boston  that  there  was  "  not  the  least  prospect "  of  such  a 
result.  And  the  instructions,  which  Newcastle  had  neither 
the  vigor  to  enforce  nor  the  good  sense  to  annul,  continued 
to  expose  the  royal  authority  to  contempt. 

The  ministry  wished  that  "  extremity  might  be  avoided." 
The  board  of  trade  were  already  familiar  with  the  opinion 
that  Massachusetts  "should  be  placed  under  a  different 
form  of  government ; "  that  its  "  people  were  as  ripe  for 
rebellion  now  as  their  ancestors  had  been  in  1641 ; "  that 
"  every  concession  was  attributed  to  fear  ;  "  yet  in  August, 
1731,  Newcastle  permitted  the  governor  to  accept,  in  lieu 
of  a  standing  salary,  arbitrary  grants  from  the  legislature. 

The  victory  revived  a  new  struggle.  Instead  of  leaving 
money  to  be  issued  on  the  warrant  of  the  governor  and 
council,  the  house  demanded  the  right  to  dispose  of  all 
money  ;  and,  to  effect  their  purpose,  withheld  all  support 
for  a  period  of  nineteen  months.  The  attention  of  the 
ministry  was  arrested.  The  crown  lawyers.  Sir  Philip 
Yorke  and  Sir  Dudley  Ryder,  saw  in  the  conduct  of  the 
assembly  a  "  design  to  assume  the  executive  power  of  gov- 


516 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 


ernment,  and  to  throw  off  their  dependence  on  Britain." 
The  people  of  Massachusetts,  confident  that  their  conduct 
"  had  endeared  them  to  all  lovers  and  asserters  of  liberty," 

were  so  infatuated  with  reliance  on  the  patriot 
jjj'^y       party  in  the  house  of  commons,  that  in  May,  1733, 

their  agents  entreated  that  body  to  "  become  interces- 
sors with  his  majesty  to  withdraw  the  royal  orders  relating 
to  the  issuing  and  disposing  of  the  public  moneys,  and  also 
those  restraining  the  emission  of  bills  of  credit,  as  contrary 
to  their  charter,  and  tending  in  their  nature  to  distress, 
if  not  ruin  them."  The  ministry  seized  the  advantage  so 
rashly  offered.  The  house  of  commons  might  set  its  own 
power  above  the  prerogative,  but  would  never  make  an 
alliance  with  a  restless  colony  against  the  king.  After  de- 
bate, the  petition  was  dismissed,  as  "  frivolous  and  ground- 
less, a  high  insult  upon  his  majesty's  government,  and 
tending  to  shake  off  the  dependency  of  the  colony  upon 
the  kingdom,  to  which  by  law  and  right  they  ought  to  be 
subject."  The  board  of  trade,  proceeding  to  frame  a  plan 
of  taxation  by  parliament,  inquired  "  what  duties  might  be 
laid  in  New  England  with  the  least  burden  to  the  people." 
Yet  the  ministry  of  that  day,  like  the  ministry  of  Queen 
Anne,  avoided  a  decision  ;  and,  in  1735,  Belcher  was  allowed 
to  accept  an  annual  vote  of  a  stipend,  though  the  board  still 
thought  it  "  better  policy  for  the  king  to  establish  a  stand- 
ing salary  out  of  the  revenue  of  the  colonies."  But  the 
spirit  of  the  people  was  not  changed  ;  we  know  from 
Charles  Wesley,  who  was  in  Boston  in  1736,  that  the 
general  language  was :  "  We  must  shake  off  the  yoke ;  we 
never  shall  be  a  free  people  till  we  shake  off  the  English 
yoke."  Meantime,  Belcher  confessed  himself  disposed  to 
let  the  assembly  "  do  the  king's  business  in  their  own  way, 
if  they  would  do  it  in  a  generous  manner ; "  with  no  in- 
struction as  to  the  fashion,  but  that  given  by  the  Duchess 
of  Kendall  to  the  goldsmith  when  the  late  king  promised 
her  a  set  of  gold  plate ;  "  Make  them  thick  and  get  them 
done  out  of  hand." 

In  New  York,  the  council  "  perceived  the  force  of  pop- 
ularity daily  increasing ; "  "  the  representatives,  since  Mont- 


1728.  THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  11.  517 

gomery's  arrival,  boldly  claimed  the  privilege  of  supreme 
authority."  On  granting  the  support  for  five  years,  they 
settled  exactly  the  name  and  pay  of  each  officer  ;  to  punish 
Morris,  the  chief  justice,  for  his  royalism,  they  reduced 
his  salary,  thus  educating  his  son,  Robert  Hunter  Morris, 
to  advocate  the  taxation  of  America  by  parliament.  "  The 
assembly  of  New  York,"  wrote  Bradley,  the  attor- 
ney-general, in  November,  1729,  "  has  already  taken  ^^[ 
most  of  the  previous  open  steps  that  a  dependent 
province  can  take  to  render  themselves  independent,  while 
the  neiirhborinor  colonies  show  a  strons^  inclination  to  seize 
the  earliest  opportunity  of  setting  up  for  themselves." 

From  New  Jersey,  in  1732,  Morris,  the  president  of  its 
council,  wrote  home  that  "  the  rendering  all  ofiicers  entirely 
dependent  on  the  people  is  the  general  inclination  of^  the 
plantations,  and  is  nowhere  pursued  with  more  steadiness 
and  less  decency  than  in  New  Jersey."  Montgomery  "gave 
way  to  the  representatives  in  all  things." 

In  Carolina,  of  which  parliament,  in  1729,  had  ratified 
the  royal  purchase,  the  same  passion  increased,  from  the 
nature  of  the  relation  of  the  landholders  to  the  crown. 
The  grant  of  lands  had  been  for  quit-rents;  the  king  be- 
came the  owner  of  the  largest  part  of  Carolina,  and  its  in- 
habitants were  yeomen.  In  1724,  Newcastle  might  have 
seen  the  assurances  to  the  board  of  trade  from  Nicholson, 
the  royal  governor,  that  "  the  spirit  of  commonwealth 
maxims  increases  here  daily."  In  December,  1725,  the 
royal  councillors  complained  to  him  earnestly  that  they 
were  "reduced  to  the  fatal  dilemma  of  either  passing  au 
improper  tax-bill,  or  of  leaving  no  support  to  the  govern- 
ment; "  that  "the  power  of  the  council  to  amend" 
was  denied.  In  1728,  they  reminded  him  that  the  1728. 
prerogative  was  lessened  by  nothing  so  much  as  by 
"  the  governor's  evermore  giving  way  to  assemblies  for  the 
temporary  gifts."  "  The  royal  authority  was  openly  tram- 
pled upon."  In  December,  1729,  the  president  of  South  Car- 
olina still  reminded  the  duke  that  "  experience  had  shown 
how  vain  is  the  attempt  to  employ  the  inhabitants  to  reduce 
themselves;    and,  there  being  no  standing  force  or  treas- 


518  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 

ury  to  apply  to  upon  the  most  emergent  occasions,  it  will 
be  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  support  any  government, 

when  either  the  one  or  the  other  is  wholly  want- 
Dec.'       i"o-"     ^  y®^^  later,  the  same  minister  was  assured 

by  Sir  Alexander  Gumming  that  the  people  "had 
raised  up  such  a  spirit  of  mutiny  and  rebellion  as  if  they 

were  independent  of  his  majesty."  The  royal  gov- 
1731.       ernment  had  hardly  been  instituted  and  an  assembly 

convened,  before  it  was  found  that  the  governor 
could  not  procure  a  fixed  salary;  and,  from  the  English 
press.  Sir  Robert  Walpole  was  informed  that  "it  would 
be  difficult  to  get  a  fair  rent-roll  by  any  means  in  that 
country."  But  the  colonial  legislature  was  ready  to  "af- 
firm defective  titles,  and  remit  arrears  of  quit-rents,"  by  a 
bill,,  of  which  Yorke  and  Talbot  advised  the  rejection  as 
an  encroachment  on  the  prerogative. 

In  North  Carolina,  things  stood  even  worse  for  royalty. 
Here,  too,  the  people  were  all  yeomen  ;  but  who  could 
estimate  quit-rents,  or  enforce  their  collection  ?  On  the 
transfer  of  its  domain  from  proprietaries  to  the  king,  the 
temporary  governor  was  making  haste,  by  secret  grants,  to 
squander  millions  of  aeres  without  bargain  for  quit-rent  or 
price,  even  issuing  blank  patents.  To  organize  this  gov- 
ernment, where  so  much  prudence  was  required,  Newcastle 
sent  a  man  who  was  passionate,  corrupt,  and  ignorant,  and 
distinguished  among  the  intemperate.  In  February,  1731, 
he  wrote  to  his  patron  that  "  the  people  of  North  Carolina 
were  neither  to  be  cajoled  nor  outwitted ;  whenever  a  gov- 
ernor attempts  to  effect  any  thing  by  these  means,  he  will 
lose  his  labor  and  show  his  ignorance."  The  first  assembly 
which  he  convened  directed  its  attention  to  grievances ;  the 
country  languished  under  the  exactions  of  oppressive  fees  ; 
and  all  his  power  was  exerted  to  deny  to  the  assembly 
the  right  of  instituting  inquiry  or  expressing  complaint. 
On  this  occasion,  the  representatives  were  altogether  and 
undeniably  in  the  right.  Yet  the  executive  proceeded  so 
far  in  resistance  and  in  language  of  obloquy  and  reproof 
that  the  first  royal  legislature  separated  without  granting 
a  revenue  or  enacting  a  law. 


1781.  THE   COLONIES   UNDER  GEORGE   11.  519 

The  quit-rents,  even  in  New  York,  were  imperfectly- 
collected;  in  North  Carolina,  the  assembly,  having 
framed  the  rent-roll  in  ^January,  1735,  would  not  1735. 
permit  the  council  to  amend  it.  The  governor,  who 
had  no  other  resource  for  his  salary,  attempted  to  force  the 
payments  by  instituting  a  court  of  exchequer.  At  a  session 
in  March,  1737,  the  assembly  imprisoned  the  king's  officers 
for  distraining  for  rent ;  and,  in  its  turn,  was  dissolved, 
leaving  North  Carolina  without  a  revenue,  its  officers  with- 
out pay. 

The  plan  for  colonizing  Georgia  met  with  opposition, 
because  "  the  emigrants,"  it  was  said,  "  will  assume  inde- 
pendence the  moment  they  feel  their  strength."  The  ob- 
jection was  overruled  ;  and  Oglethorpe,  who  founded  the 
settlement,  lived  to  behold  it  a  free  commonwealth. 

The  indifference  of  the  British  ministry  to  the  political 
strifes  in  the  colonies  was  the  result  of  a  system.  To  have 
impaired  the  liberties  of  America  would  have  aroused  the 
formidable  opposition  of  the  English  dissenters  ;  Connect- 
icut, the  cancelling  of  whose  charter  had  been  peevishly- 
solicited  by  one  of  its  own  sons,  escaped  every 
danger.  Its  freeholders  loved  to  divide  their  do-  1728. 
mains  among  their  children.  In  regard  to  intestate 
estates,  their  law  was  annulled  in  England ;  and  the  Eng- 
lish law,  favoring  the  eldest  born,  was  declared  to  be  in 
force  among  them.  Republican  equality  seemed  endan- 
gered ;  but  in  the  conflict,  protracted  through  more  than 
twenty  years,  the  American  system  of  legislation  triumphed ; 
and  the  king  receded  from  the  vain  project  of  enforcing 
English  rules  of  inheritance  on  the  husbandmen  of  New 
England. 

But  there  was  no  hope  of  forbearance  when  the  1731. 
English  industrial  world  expressed  their  dread  of 
American  manufactures.  By  restricting  them,  the  board  of 
trade,  the  ministry,  the  united  voice  of  Great  Britain,  pro- 
posed to  guarantee  dependence.  No  sentiment  addressed 
itself  more  directly  to  British  interests,  or  won  more  uni- 
versal acceptance.  Fashion  adopted  it;  Queen  Caroline 
and  the  Prince  of  Wales  were  its  patrons;  and  Joshua  Gee, 


520  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 

who  had  already  for  many  years  been  consulted  by  the 
board  of  trade,  and  who  is  said  to  have  advised  an  Ameri- 
can stamp  act  by  parliament,  imbodied  the  ancient  maxims 

in  a  work  which  was  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  min- 
1729.       istry  and  the  royal  family.      He,   too,  noticed  the 

vast  increase  of  the  colonies ;  how  much  they  were 
the  resort  of  strangers  ;  and  "  as  people  had  been  filled 
with  fears  that  the  colonies,  if  encouraged  to  raise  rough 
materials,  would  set  up  for  themselves,"  he  pointed  out  the 
prohibition  of  colonial  manufactures  as  the  security  of  Eng- 
land. He  would  encourage  the  raising  of  silks,  but  pro- 
hibit the  use  of  any  throwster's  mill,  or  doubling  and  twist- 
ing silk  with  any  machine  whatever ;  the  colonists  might 
raise  hemp  and  flax,  and  spin  and  weave  them  in  their  own 
families,  but  not  a  loom  might  be  set  up  beyond  the  Atlan- 
tic to  weave  a  yard  of  cloth  for  the  market.  Of  iron,  he 
proposed  that  "  they  shall  for  time  to  come  never  erect  the 
manufacturing  of  any  under  the  size  of  a  two-shilling  nail, 
horse-shoe  nails  excepted ;  that  all  slitting-mills  and  engines 
for  drawing  wire  or  weaving  stockings  be  put  down;" 
"  and  that  every  smith  who  keeps  a  common  forge  or  shop 
shall  register  his  name,  the  name  of  every  servant  which  he 
shall  employ,  renew  his  license  once  every  year,  and  pay 
for  the  liberty  of  working  at  such  trade ;  that  all  negroes 
shall  be  prohibited  from  weaving  either  linen  or  woollen, 
or  spinning  or  combing  of  wool,  or  working  at  any  manu- 
facture of  iron  further  than  making  it  into  pig  or  bar  iron ; 
that  they  be  also  prohibited  from  manufacturing  of  hats, 
stockings,  or  leather  of  any  kind."  Others  proposed  to  Sir 
Robert  Walpole  that  "  an  exact  account  be  taken  of  all 
looms  now  erected  on  the  plantations,  that  for  the  future 
no  other  or  more  looms  be  tolerated."  These  views  pre- 
vailed at  court,  in  the  board  of  trade,  and  throughout  Eng- 
land. Men,  who  heard  with  indifference  of  the  bickerings 
of  colonial  governors  with  the  legislatures,  turned  pale  at 
the  mention  of  a  provincial  forge,  and  demanded  the  de- 
struction of  all  "  the  iron  works  in  the  plantations." 

To  manufacture  like  Englishmen  was  esteemed  a  sort  of 
forgery,  punishable  like  an  imitation   of  the  British  coin. 


1733.  THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  11.  521 

The  mercantile  system  was  the  superstition  of  that  age. 
The  people  worshipped  it ;  statesmen  were  overawed  by  it ; 
philosophers  dared  not  question  it.  England  believed  itself 
free  from  bigotry ;  and  its  mind  had  bowed  to  a  new  super- 
stition. Now  was  quickened  the  system  of  an  inquisition 
by  authority  into  American  industry,  of  which  every  gov- 
ernor was  enjoined  to  report  the  condition.  Spain  had 
never  watched  more  jealously  the  growth  of  free  opinion, 
than  British  statesmanship  the  development  of  colonial  en- 
terprise. Ireland,  which  had  been  excluded  from  the  Amer- 
ican trade  as  carefully  as  France  or  Portugal,  could  still  im- 
port directly  none  but  the  unenumerated  commodities,  and 
,oi  these  hops  were  excepted ;  for  the  growers  of  hops  in  Eng- 
land reserved  the  market  of  the  sister  kingdom  exclusively 
to  themselves.  Bounties  were  renewed  to  naval  stores,  but 
naval  stores  were  enumerated,  so  that  they  could  be  car- 
ried to  Great  Britain  only.  Debts  due  in  the  planta- 
tions to  Englishmen  might  be  proved  before  an  English  1733. 
magistrate ;  and,  overthrowing  the  laws  of  Virginia, 
the  parliament  made  lands  in  the  plantations  liable  for  debts. 
That  America,  the  home  of  beavers,  might  not  manufacture 
its  own  hats,  it  was  enacted  that  none  should  be  hatters, 
nor  employed  as  journeymen,  who  had  not  served  an  ap- 
prenticeship of  seven  years  ;  that  no  hatter  should  employ 
more  than  two  apprentices ;  that  no  negro  should  serve  at 
the  work ;  that  no  American  hat  should  be  sent  from  one 
plantation  to  another,  nor  be  loaded  upon  any  horse,  cart, 
or  carriage  for  conveying  from  one  plantation  to  another. 
Similar  rules  were  proposed  for  American  iron;  but  the 
English  ironmongers  asked  for  a  total  prohibition  of  forges ; 
and  the  English  gentry,  of  furnaces  for  preparing  the  rough 
material,  because  the  fires  in  America  diminished  the  value 
of  British  woodlands.  In  the  jar  of  interested  demands, 
the  subject  was  postponed. 

The  restrictive  system,  adopted  by  England  in  superficial 
light-heartedness,  never  checked  a  manufacture  in  the  colo- 
nies ;  they  were  excluded  from  rivalry  by  their  condition, 
and  not  by  British  statutes.  Nor  was  foreign  trade  sup- 
pressed.    The  chief  fruit  of  the  selfish  metropolitan  legisla- 


522  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 

tion  was  discontent  and  apprehension  in  the  colonies.  A 
measure,  adopted  in  1733,  brought  America  nearer  to  inde- 
pendence. England  favored  the  islands  more  than  the  con- 
tinent ;  for  the  West  Indians  were  as  the  bees  which  bring 
all  their  honey  home  to  the  hive ;  and,  moreover,  dwelling 
in  England,  they  held  estates  there,  which  gave  them 
weight  in  parliament.  For  many  years,  even  from  the 
reign  of  William  of  Orange,  they  had  sought  to  prohibit, 
as  "  pernicious,"  all  trade  between  the  northern  colonies  and 
the  French  and  Spanish  and  Dutch  West  India  Islands. 

After  the  peace  of  Utrecht,  the  English  continental  colo- 
nies grew  accustomed  to  a  humble  commerce  with  the 
islands  of  the  French  and  Dutch,  purchasing  of  them  sugar, 
rum,  and  molasses,  in  return  for  provisions,  horses,  and 
lumber.  The  British  sugar  colonies,  always  eager  for  them- 
selves to  engage  in  contraband  trade  with  the  Spanish 
provinces,  demanded  of  parliament  a  prohibition  of  all 
intercourse  between  the  northern  colonies  and  any  tropical 
islands  but  the  British. 

In  the  formation  of  the  colonial  system,  each  European 
nation  valued  most  the  colonies  of  which  the  products  least 
interfered  with  its  own.  Jealous  of  the  industry  of  New 
England,  England  saw  with  delight  the  increase  of  its  tropi- 
cal plantations.  It  was  willing,  therefore,  to  check  the  north 
and  to  favor  the  south.  Hence  permission  was  given  to 
the  planters  of  Carolina,  and  afterwards  of  Georgia,  to  ship 
their  rice  directly  to  any  port  in  Europe  south  of  Cape  Finis- 
terre.  Hence,  when  in  November,  1724,  the  ship-carpenters 
of  the  river  Thames  complained  "  that  their  trade  was  hurt, 
and  that  their  workmen  emigrated,  because  so  many  vessels 
were  built  in  New  England,"  the  board  of  trade  supported 
their  complaints ;  and  when  a  few  years  later,  in  imitation 
of  the  French  policy,  the  act  of  navigation  was  modified 
and  liberty  granted  for  carrying  sugar  from  the  British 
sugar  plantations  directly  to  foreign  markets,  ships  built 
and  ships  owned  in  the  American  plantations  were  excluded 
from  the  privilege.  Hence,  also,  the  tropical  products, 
especially  the  products  of  the  cane,  formed  the  central  point 
of  colonial  policy.     To  monopolize  the  culture  of  sugar  and 


1733.  THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  U.  523 

to  engross  the  traffic  in  slaves  became  the  cardinal  hope  of 
English  commercial  ambition. 

The  great  patron  of  the  islands  against  "  the  continent  '* 
was  the  irritated  auditor-general  for  the  plantations,  Horatio 
Walpole  ;  and  the  house  of  commons,  thinking  to  adopt  a 
compromise,  still  permitted  the  northern  colonies  to  find  a 
market  for  their  fish,  lumber,  provisions,  horses,  and 
other  produce  in  the  foreign  islands,  but,  in  1733,  re-  1733. 
solved  to  impose  on  the  return  cargo  a  discriminating 
duty.  "  Such  impositions,"  said  Rhode  Island,  in  its  petition 
to  the  house  of  commons,  "  would  be  highly  prejudicial  to 
our  charter."  "  The  petition,"  objected  Sir  William  Yonge, 
"  looks  mighty  like  aiming  at  independence  and  disclaiming 
the  authority  of  this  house,  as  if  this  house  had  not  a  power 
to  tax  them."  "  I  hope,"  said  another,  "  they  have  no  char- 
ter which  debars  this  house  from  taxing  them,  as  well  as  any 
other  subjects  ;"  while  a  third  held  that,  "  as  the  colonies  are 
all  a  part  of  the  people  of  Great  Britain,  they  are  generally 
represented  in  this  house  as  well  as  the  rest  of  the  people  are." 
On  the  other  hand.  Sir  John  Barnard  urged  the  reception 
of  the  petition,  since  its  presentation  "  was  a  direct  acknowl- 
edgment of  the  authority  of  the  house;"  and  Pulteney, 
Sir  William  Windham,  and  their  associates,  argued  that 
the  petition  should  at  least  be  read.  But  the  commons 
would  receive  none  against  a  money  bill. 

New  York  esteemed  the  imposition  of  the  proposed  duties 
worse  than  the  prohibition ;  its  merchants  appealed  to  the 
equity  of  the  house  of  lords,  on  account  of  "  the  inconven- 
ience to  trade  ; "  and  Partridge,  the  agent  of  the  New  York 
merchants,  having  enclosed  their  petition  to  Secretary  New- 
castle, added  :  "  Besides  the  injury,  the  bill  will  be  of  itself 
almost  tantamount  to  a  prohibition ;  it  is  divesting  them  of 
their  rights  as  the  king's  natural  born  subjects  and  English- 
men, in  levying  subsidies  on  them  against  their  consent, 
when  they  are  annexed  to  no  county  in  Britain,  have  no 
representative  in  parliament,  nor  are  any  part  of  the  legis- 
lature of  this  kingdom.  It  will  be  drawn  into  a  precedent 
hereafter." 

Petitions,  arguments,  and  appeals  were  disregarded  ;  and, 


524  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 


after  two  years'  discussion,  an  act  of  parliament,  recognis- 
ing the  prosperity  of  "  the  sugar  colonies  in  America  as  of 
the  greatest  consequence  to  the  trade  of  England,"  "gave 
and  granted  "  a  duty  of  ninepence  on  every  gallon  of  rum, 
sixpence  on  every  gallon  of  molasses,  and  five  shillings  on 
every  hundred  weight  of  sugar  imported  from  foreign  colo- 
nies into  any  of  the  British  plantations.  The  penalties  under 
the  act  were  recoverable  in  the  courts  of  admiralty. 

Here  was  an  act  of  the  British  parliament,  to  be  executed 
by  officers  of  royal  appointment,  levying  a  tax  on  consump- 
tion in  America.  In  England,  it  was  afterwards  appealed  to 
as  a  precedent ;  in  America,  the  sixpence  duty  on  molasses 
had  all  the  effect  of  a  prohibition,  and  led  only  to  clan- 
destine importations.  Even  in  case  of  forfeitures,  nobody 
appeared  to  demand  the  third  part  given  to  the  king  for 
the  colony.  The  act  of  parliament  produced  no  revenue, 
and  appeared  to  be  no  more  than  a  regulation  of  commerce 
a  new  development  of  the  colonial  system.  The  enactment 
had  its  motive  in  the  desire  to  confirm  the  monopoly  of  the 
British  sugar  plantations  ;  and,  so  long  as  it  brought  no 
income  to  the  crown,  it  was  complained  of  as  a  grievance, 
but  not  resisted  as  a  tax. 

In  New  York,  the  dread  of  an  act  prohibiting  trade  with 
the  foreign  sugar  colonies  had,  in  1732,  swayed  the  legisla- 
ture to  grant  supplies  for  a  period  of  six  years ;  but  William 
Cosby,  the  governor,  a  brother-in-law  of  the  Earl  of  Hali- 
fax, and  connected  with  Newcastle,  a  boisterous  and  irri- 
table man,  having  little  understanding  and  no  sense  of 
decorum  or  of  virtue,  had  been  sent  over  to  clutch  at  per- 
quisites, and  repair  his  broken  fortunes.  Few  men  hastened 
colonial  emancipation  more  than  Cosby.  Incapable  of  a 
political  system,  he  removed  Morris,  the  royalist  chief  justice 
of  New  York,  for  what  the  privy  council  called  insufficient 
reasons,  and  raised  to  the  office  James  Delancey,  a  young 
man  of  rare  ability,  of  Huguenot  ancestry,  who  won  his 
way  to  political  influence  through  the  colonial  assembly. 
By  him,  also,  James  Alexander  and  the  elder  William 
Smith,  who  planned  for  New  York  the  system  of  annual 
grants  of  support,  were  dismissed  from  the  council  as  "  ex- 


1734.  THE   COLONIES   UNDER  GEORGE   II.  525 

araples,"  so  he  wrote,  "  to  deter  others  from  being  advocates 
for  the  Boston  principles."  "  Oh  that  I  could  see  them  on 
a  gallows  at  the  fort  gate ! "  was  the  "  highest  wish  "  of 
his  wife,  whose  grandson,  the  Duke  of  Grafton,  in  less  than 
forty  years,  became  England's  prime  minister. 

Imitating  Andros  in  Massachusetts,  Cosby  insisted  on 
new  surveys  of  lands  and  new  grants,  in  lieu  of  the  old. 
To  the  objection  of  acting  against  law,  he  answered  :  "  Do 
you  think  I  mind  that  ?  I  have  a  great  interest  in  England." 
The  house  of  assembly,  chosen  under  royalist  influences 
and  continued  from  year  to  year,  offered  no  resistance.  The 
right  of  the  electors  was  impaired,  for  the  period  of  the 
assembly  was  unlimited.  The  courts  of  law  were  not  pli- 
able;  and  Cosby  displaced  and  appointed  judges,  without 
soliciting  the  consent  of  the  council  or  waiting  for  the  ap- 
probation of  the  sovereign. 

Complaint  could  be  heard  only  through  the  press.  A 
newspaper  was  established  to  defend  the  popular  cause ;  and, 
in  about  a  year  after  its  establishment,  its  printer, 
John  Peter  Zenger,  was  imprisoned  by  an  order  of  nov^^it. 
the  council,  on  the  charge  of  publishing  false  and 
seditious  libels.  The  grand  jury  would  find  no  bill  against 
him,  and  the  attorney-general  filed  an  information.  The 
counsel  of  Zenger  took  exceptions  to  the  commissions  of 
the  judges,  because  they  ran  during  pleasure,  and  because 
they  had  been  granted  without  the  consent  of  council.  The 
angry  judge  met  the  objection  by  disbarring  James  Alex- 
ander who  offered  it,  though  he  stood  at  the  head  of  his 
profession  in  New  York  for  sagacity,  penetration,  and  appli- 
cation to  business.  All  the  central  colonies  regarded  the 
controversy  as  their  own.  At  the  trial,  the  publishing  was 
confessed ;  but  the  aged  and  venerable  Andrew  Hamilton, 
who  came  from  Philadelphia  to  plead  for  Zenger,  justified 
the  publication  by  asserting  its  truth.  "You  cannot  be 
admitted,"  interrupted  the  chief  justice,  "to  give  the  truth 
of  a  libel  in  evidence."  "  Then,"  said  Hamilton  to  the  jury, 
"we  appeal  to  you  for  witnesses  of  the  facts.  The  jury 
have  a  right  to  determine  both  the  law  and  the  fact,  and 
they  ought   to   do  so."      "  The  question   before  you,"  ho 


526  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 

added,  "is  not  the  cause  of  a  poor  printer,  nor  of  New  York 
alone ;  it  is  the  best  cause,  the  cause  of  liberty.  Every  man 
who  prefers  freedom  to  a  life  of  slavery  will  bless  and  honor 
you  as  men  who,  by  an  impartial  verdict,  lay  a  noble  foun- 
dation for  securing  to  ourselves,  our  posterity,  and  our 
neighbors  that  to  which  nature  and  the  honor  of  our  coun- 
try have  given  us  a  right,"  the  liberty  of  opposing  arbitrary 
power  by  speaking  and  writing  truth."  The  jury  gave 
their  verdict,  "  Not  guilty."  The  people  of  the  colonies 
exulted  in  the  victory  and  awarded  high  honors  to  the  jury. 
Hamilton  received  of  the  common  council  of  New  York  the 
franchises  of  the  city  for  "  his  learned  and  generous  defence 
of  the  rights  of  mankind  and  the  liberty  of  the  press."  A 
patriot  of  the  next  generation  esteemed  the  trial  of  Zenger 
to  have  been  the  morning  star  of  the  American  revolution. 
But  it  was  not  one  light  alone  that  ushered  in  the  dawn  of 
our  independence :  the  stars  of  a  whole  constellation  sang 
together. 

When,  in  1736,  on  the  death  of  Cosby,  Clarke,  the  deputy 
of  Horatio  Walpole,  became  lieutenant-governor  of  New 
York,  he,  too,  could  obtain  no  obedience  to  the  king's  pre- 
rogative and  instructions.  "  Since  treason  has  been  com- 
mitted," he  wrote  to  the  board  of  trade,  "  examples  should 

be  made."  In  vain  did  he  dissolve  one  assembly. 
1737.       "  No  government,"  thus  in  September,  1737,  did  the 

new  assembly  address  him,  "  no  government  can  be 
safe  without  proper  checks  upon  those  intrusted  with  power. 
We  tell  you,  you  are  not  to  expect  that  we  either  will  raise 
sums  unfit  to  be  raised,  or  put  what  we  shall  raise  into  the 
power  of  a  governor  to  misapply,  if  we  can  prevent  it ;  nor 
shall  we  make  up  any  other  deficiencies  than  what  we  con- 
ceive are  fit  and  just  to  be  paid,  or  continue  what  support 
and  revenue  we  shall  raise  for  any  longer  time  than  one 
year ;  nor  do  we  think  it  convenient  to  do  even  that,  until 
such  laws  are  passed  as  we  conceive  to  be  necessary  for  the 
safety  of  the  inhabitants  of  this  colony,  who  have  reposed 
a  trust  in  us  for  that  only  purpose,  and,  by  the  grace  of  God, 
we  will  endeavor  not  to  deceive  them."  Clarke  submitted, 
and,  bartering  law  against  law,  consented  to  a  bill  for  tri- 
ennial assemblies. 


1740.  THE  COLONIES  UNDER   GEORGE  II.  627 

Royal  governors  more  and  more  earnestly  solicited  an 
application  to  parliament.  To  "  terminate  the  disputes  be- 
tween the  people  of  the  colonies  and  their  governors, 
about  complying  with  royal  instructions,"  in  1739  men  1739. 
in  England,  interested  in  American  affairs,  echoed 
the  opinions  of  the  board  of  trade  through  the  press,  and 
recommended  as  "  the  supreme  authority  in  the  plantations  " 
"an  experienced  general  officer,"  who  should  command 
regular  troops,  and  on  every  emergent  occasion  take  counsel 
of  the  respective  governors.  And,  as  "the  many  distinct 
provinces  could  never  be  brought  voluntarily  to  raise  a  fund 
by  any  general  tax  among  themselves,"  it  was  deemed 
essential  that  "  the  duties  on  stamps  be  extended  to  all  the 
colonies  by  act  of  parliament."  "  Since  Britain,"  it  was 
argued,  "  must  erect  forts  and  maintain  troops  for  the  de- 
fence of  her  dominions  in  America,  the  subjects  there  will 
have  no  just  cause  to  complain,  if,  for  that  particular  service, 
one  of  the  easiest  and  least  burdensome  taxes  imposed  at 
home  be  now  extended  to  the  plantations." 

The  prohibitory  duty  on  molasses  imported  into  the 
northern  colonies,  as  established  by  the  law  of  1733,  had 
been  productive  only  of  bribes  to  the  royal  officers  of  the 
revenue,  and  to  advocates  and  admiralty  judges,  of  whom 
as  the  appointed  guardians  of  the  British  commercial  mo- 
nopoly Belcher  wrote :  "  No  prince  ever  had  such  a  crew 
of  villains  to  betray  his  interests  and  break  the  acts 
of  trade."  In  1740,  Ashley,  a  well-informed  writer,  1740. 
proposed  to  establish  a  revenue  by  reducing  the  duty 
to  one  half  or  one  third,  or  even  to  a  sixth,  of  the  old  rate. 
But  at  that  time  proposals  for  taxing  the  colonies  by  act  of 
parliament  found  no  support.  "I  will  leave  the  taxing  of 
the  British  colonies,"  such  are  the  words  attributed  to  Sir 
Robert  Walpole  towards  the  close  of  his  ministry,  and 
such  certainly  were  his  sentiments,  "for  some  of  my 
successors,  who  may  have  more  courage  than  I  have,  and 
be  less  a  friend  to  commerce  than  I  am.  It  has  been  a 
maxim  with  me,"  he  added,  "  during  my  administration,  to 
encourage  the  trade  of  the  American  colonies  to  the  utmost 
latitude :    nay,  it  has   been   necessary  to   pass   over   some 


528  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 

irregularities  in  their  trade  with  Europe ;  for,  by  encourag- 
ing them  to  an  extensive,  growing  foreign  commerce,  if 
they  gain  five  hundred  thousand  pounds,  I  am  convinced 
that,  in  two  years  afterwards,  full  two  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  pounds  of  this  gain  will  be  in  his  majesty's  ex- 
chequer by  the  labor  and  produce  of  this  kingdom,  as 
immense  quantities  of  every  kind  of  our  manufactures  go 
thither ;  and,  as  they  increase  in  the  foreign  American 
trade,  more  of  our  produce  will  be  wanted.  This  is  tax- 
ing them  more  agreeably  to  their  own  constitution  and. 
laws." 

While  the  ministry  as  yet  avoided  taxation  by  act  of 
parliament,  the  irresponsible  board  of  trade  persevered  in 
recommending  authoritative  measures,  especially  against 
Massachusetts,  to  reduce  its  territory,  to  control  its  action, 
and  to  change  its  government.  Of  the  members  of  the  board, 
no  one  had  more  sway  over  Newcastle  than  the  "  proud, 
imperious  Bladen,"  "a  creature,"  says  Belcher,  "who  lived, 
upon  rapine,  and  yet  from  his  haughtiness  died  a  beggar." 
"Massachusetts,"  he  assured  Newcastle,  in  October,  1740, 
"is  a  kind  of  commonwealth,  where  the  king  is  hardly  a 
stadholder."  To  break  the  power  of  that  province,  he  ob- 
tained on  its  disputed  boundary  an  arbitrary  decree,  which 
awarded  to  New  Hampshire  far  more  than  that  government 
claimed ;  and  the  decree,  though  wantonly  unjust,  was  en- 
forced ;  for  the  agent  to  protest  against  it,  the  amiable  and 
cultivated  Thomas  Hutchinson,  too  ready  to  acquiesce  in 
oppression,  did  but  solicit  justice  as  a  favor.  Enlarged  by 
territory  from  Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire,  in  1741,  was 
erected  into  a  separate  government,  the  only  royal  govern- 
ment in  New  England.  Benning  Wentworth,  its  governor, 
a  supporter  of  the  church  of  England  and  of  kingly  author- 
ity, arriving  in  his  province  in  June,  1741,  "found  scarcely 
the  shadow  of  prerogative,  as  the  whole  had  been  changed 
to  the  privilege  of  the  people."  But  he  promised  "  to  intro- 
duce gradually  the  rights  of  the  crown." 

The  proclamation  of  Queen  Anne,  which  pretended  to 
give  to  coin  one  value  in  England,  another  in  the  colo- 
nies, only  gave  to  the  words  pounds,  shillings,  and  pence 


Chap.  XLI.     THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  II.  529 

a  different  signification  in  America  from  that  which  they- 
bore  in  Europe.  It  could  not  affect  the  value  of  gold  or 
silver,  which  are  an  actual  product  of  labor ;  as  little  could 
it  fix  the  value  of  the  colonial  paper,  which  was  contin- 
gent on  the  policy  of  ten  or  twelve  disconnected  colonial 
governments. 

A  new  country  desires  credit,  submits  even  to  extortion 
and  expedients  rather  than  renounce  its  use.  Where  nature 
invited  to  the  easy  and  rapid  development  of  its  resources, 
hope  saw  the  opportunity  of  golden  advantages,  if  credit 
could  be  obtained  ;  and,  in  the  want  of  it,  an  eager  cupidity 
was  ever  fruitful  in  devices  that  might  be  employed  in  its 
stead.  The  condition  of  a  land  soliciting  labor,  but  not  yet 
enriched  by  its  fruits ;  the  impediments  to  progress  conse- 
quent on  colonial  dependence  ;  the  influence  of  men  of  busir 
ness  on  legislation,  —  combined  to  bring  about  extraordinary 
results,  which  nothing  but  the  simplicity  of  colonial  life 
and  purity  of  colonial  morals  could  have  rendered  toler- 
able. The  constant  state  of  debt  to  the  mother  country 
created  a  demand  for  remittances ;  so  that  specie  disap- 
peared. America  was  incapable  of  the  voluntary  self-denial 
requisite  to  recover  a  specie  currency  through  commerce 
with  England ;  and  was  debarred  from  such  traffic  as 
would  have  furnished  a  supply  from  other  nations.  The 
consequence  was  a  policy  which  the  history  of  the  world 
had  never  yet  witnessed.  That  it  is  the  duty  of  govern- 
ment to  provide  a  currency  for  commerce  was  the  maxim 
that  came  into  vogue  in  every  colony  but  one ;  and,  as  the 
impossibility  of  maintaining  a  metallic  currency  in  a  state 
of  colonial  dependence  was  assumed  as  undeniable,  the 
maxim,  reduced  to  practice,  led  to  the  perilous  use  of 
paper  money.  The  provinces  were  impelled  to  manufac- 
ture bills  of  credit  and  to  institute  loan-offices.  The  credit 
of  the  colonies  was  invoked  in  behalf  of  borrowers.  The 
first  emissions  of  provincial  paper  had  their  origin  in 
the  immediate  necessities  of  government.  Next,  in  times 
of  peace,  provinces  which  had  an  empty  treasury  issued 
bills  of  credit,  redeemable  at  a  remote  day,  and  put  in 
circulation  by  means  of  loans  to  citizens  at  a  low  rate  of 
VOL.  II.  34 


630  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 

interest  on  the  mortgage  of  lands.  The  bills,  in  themselves 
almost  worthless  from  the  remoteness  of  the  day  of  pay- 
ment, were  made  a  lawful  tender.  The  borrower,  who 
received  them,  paid  annual  interest  on  his  debt  to  the  state; 
and  this  interest  constituted  a  public  revenue,  obtained,  it 
was  boasted,  without  taxation.  In  1712,  South  Carolina 
issued  in  this  manner  "  a  bank "  of  f oity-eight  thousand 
pounds.  Massachusetts,  which  for  twenty  years  had  used 
bills  of  credit  for  public  purposes,  in  1714  authorized  an 
emission  of  fifty  thousand  pounds  in  bills,  to  be  put  into 
the  hands  of  five  trustees,  and  let  out  at  five  per  cent  on 
safe  mortgages  of  real  estate,  to  be  paid  back  in  five  annual 
instalments.  The  debts  were  not  thus  paid  back;  but  an  in- 
creased clamor  was  raised  for  greater  emissions.  In  1716, 
an  additional  issue  of  one  hundred  thousand  pounds  was 
made,  and  committed  to  the  care  of  county  trustees.  The 
scarcity  of  money  was  even  more  and  more  complained  of : 
"  all  the  silver  money  was  sent  into  Great  Britain  to  make 
returns  for  what  was  owing  there."  Yet  the  system  was 
imitated  in  every  colony  but  Virginia.  Franklin,  who  after- 
wards perceived  its  evil  tendencies,  assisted  in  1723  in  in- 
troducing it  into  Pennsylvania,  where  silver  had  cir- 
1728.  culated  ;  and  the  complaint  was  soon  heard  that,  "  as 
their  money  was  paper,  they  had  very  little  gold 
and  silver,  and,  when  any  came  in,  it  was  accounted  as 
merchandise."  Rhode  Island,  on  one  occasion,  combined 
the  old  system  of  payments  made  in  the  staple  products  of 
industry  with  the  new  system  of  credit,  and  in  1721  "  issued 
a  bank  of  forty  thousand  pounds,"  on  which  the  interest 
was  payable  in  hemp  or  flax. 

The  first  effects  of  the  unreal  enlargement  of  the  currency 
appeared  beneficial ;  and  men  rejoiced  in  the  seeming  im- 
pulse given  to  trade.  It  was  presently  found  that  specie 
was  repelled  from  the  country  by  the  system;  that  the 
paper  furnished  but  a  depreciated  currency,  fluctuating  in 
value  with  every  new  emission ;  that,  from  the  interest  of 
debtors,  there  was  between  the  colonies  some  rivalship  in 
issues ;  that  the  increase  of  paper,  far  from  remedying  the 
scarcity  of  money,  excited  a  thirst  for  new  issues ;  that,  as 


1740.  THE  COLONIES   UNDER  GEORGE  II.  531 

the  party  of  debtors,  if  it  prevailed  in  the  legislature  but 
once  in  ten  years,  could  flood  the  country  with  bills  of 
credit,  men  had  an  interest  to  remain  in  debt;  that  the 
income  of  widows  and  orphans,  and  all  who  had  salaries  or 
annuities,  was  ruinously  affected  by  the  fluctuations;  that 
administrators  were  tempted  to  delay  settlements  of  estates, 
as  each  year  diminished  the  value  of  the  inheritances  which 
were  to  be  paid ;  and,  finally,  that  commerce  was  corrupted 
in  its  sources  by  the  uncertainty  attending  the  expressions 
of  value  in  every  contract. 

This  uncertainty  rapidly  pervaded  the  country.  In  1738, 
the  New  England  currency  was  worth  but  one  hundred  for 
five  hundred ;  that  of  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania, 
and  Maryland,  one  hundred  for  one  hundred  and  sixty  or 
seventy,  or  two  hundred ;  of  South  Carolina,  one  for  eight ; 
while  of  North  Carolina,  of  all  the  states  the  least  com- 
mercial in  its  character,  the  paper  was  in  London  esteemed 
worth  but  one  for  fourteen,  in  the  colony  but  one  for  ten. 
And  yet  the  policy  itself  was  not  repudiated.  The  states- 
men of  England  never  proposed  or  desired  to  raise  the 
domestic  currency  of  the  colonies  to  an  equality  with  that 
of  the  great  commercial  world ;  and  the  system  which 
Franklin  had  advocated  found  an  apologist  in  Pownall,  and 
was  defended  by  Edmund  Burke,  except  that  Burke,  instead 
of  a  currency  of  depreciated  paper,  proposed  an  emission  of 
base  coin. 

In  Massachusetts,  a  struggle  ensued  for  a  new  application 
of  the  credit  system  by  the  establishment  of  a  land  bank. 
The  design  was  long  resisted  as  "  a  fraudulent  undertaking," 
and  was  acknowledged  as  tending  to  give  to  the  company 
"  power  and  influence  in  all  public  concerns,  more  than 
belonged  to  them,  more  than  they  could  make  a  good  use 
of,  and  therefore  unwarrantable  ; "  yet,  but  for  the  interfer- 
ence of  parliament,  it  would  at  last  have  been  established, 
and  "the  authority  of  government,"  such  is  the  language 
of  a  royalist  historian  of  the  last  century,  "  would  have 
been  entirely  in  the  land-bank  company." 

To  repress  its  issue  of  paper  money,  the  crown  lawyers, 
in  April,  1740,  advised  an  appeal  to  parliament.    The  house 


532  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 

of  commons  condemned  the  mischievous  practice,  and  ad- 
dressed the  king  in  support  of  the  royal  instructions.  Still 
the  frenzy  for  paper  money  defied  the  authority  of  the  royal 
command;  and  the  private  land  bank  began  to  issue  paper 
that,  from  its  character,  never  could  be  redeemed.  Parlia- 
ment interfered  in  1741  "  to  restrain  undertakings  in  the  colo- 
nies," by  enacting  that  the  statute  of  1719,  which  was  passed 
after  the  ruin  of  the  South  Sea  company,  and  which  made 
every  member  of  a  joint-stock  company  personally  liable  for 
its  debts,  was,  and  had  from  the  first  been,  in  force  in  the 
colonies.  Every  principle  of  public  policy  required  a  check 
to  the  issues  of  paper  money  ;  but  nothing  could  have  been 
more  arbitrary  than  the  remedy  adopted  by  parliament. 

From  time  to  time,  the  Anglican  church  showed  its 
1725.  old  distrust.  In  1725,  the  ministers  of  Massachu- 
setts, by  the  hand  of  Cotton  Mather,  desired  a  synod, 
"  to  recover  and  establish  the  faith  and  order  of  the  gospel." 
The  council  assented ;  the  house  hesitated,  and,  by  a  refer- 
ence to  the  next  session,  gave  opportunity  for  instructions 
from  the  people.  The  bishop  of  London  anticipated  their 
decision ;  and  a  reprimand  from  England  forbade  "  the 
authoritative  "  meeting,  as  a  bad  precedent  for  dissenters. 
An  English  prelate  stood  once  more  in  antagonism  to  the 
churches  of  New  England. 

But  British  ministries  of  that  age  were  indifferent  to 
religion.  "  The  apprehension  at  court "  of  the  colonies 
"affecting  an  independency  on  the  government  at  home  " 
was  "  one  considerable  objection  against  sending  bishops 
into  America,"  lest  it  should  provoke  the  vast  body  of  dis- 
senters to  disloyalty.  The  prayer  for  interference  came 
from  Episcopalians  in  America,  who  asked  for  "  a  consti- 
tution in  church  and  state  as  near  as  possible  conformable  to 
that  of  their  mother  country ; "  "  bishops,"  wrote  tTohnson, 
"  and  I  could  wish  a  viceroy."  "  The  people  of  the  English 
church  in  these  plantations,"  it  was  said,  "abhorred  inde- 
pendency on  England ; "  and  "  the  dissenters  were  generally 
people  of  anti-monarchical  as  well  as  anti-episcopal  princi- 
1739.  pies."  "  The  people  of  New  England,"  wrote  Dunbar 
Marcii.    from  jq-ew  Hampshire,  in  March,  1739,  "generally 


1729.  THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  II.  533 

deem  themselves  independent,  as  is  their  religion ; "  were 
the  church  of  England  encouraged,  it  would  "  bring  them 
to  better  principles  than  they  now  are  of,  being  generally 
republicans."  But,  so  long  as  Walpole  directed  the  affairs 
of  the  kingdom,  America  had  little  to  fear  from  bigotry 
or  intolerance.  All  the  time,  liberal  opinion  was  gaining 
strength  in  Massachusetts,  and  a  law  of  1729  relieved 
Quakers  and  Baptists  from  parish  taxes. 

I  will  close  this  wearisome  recapitulation  of  errors  of 
principle  which  infected  the  imperial  legislation  for  the 
colonies,  and  the  weaknesses  and  vices  that  attended  their 
administration,  by  commemorating  a  measure  of  the  largest 
import  and  of  most  beneficent  liberality.  In  1740,  Great 
Britain  by  act  of  parliament  assured  English  privileges 
to  Americans,  and  in  the  most  benign  and  confiding  spirit 
of  legislation,  trampling  on  the  feudal  principle  of  sub- 
ordination, threw  America  wide  open  to  the  vassals  of 
every  liege  in  the  world,  of  whatever  lineage  or  tongue, 
binding  them  by  oaths,  and  conferring  on  them  all  the 
privileges  of  native  subjects.  And  as  some  sects  scrupled 
to  take  an  oath,  and  the  Moravian  brethren  refused  military 
service,  special  laws  favored  them  with  exemptions. 

All  this  period  was  marked  by  the  unparalleled  prosperity 
of  the  colonies.  The  population  had  doubled  within  twenty- 
five  years,  and  grew  rich  through  industry.  Boston  con- 
tinued its  great  manufacture  of  ships,  and  found  a  market 
for  them  among  the  French  and  Spaniards  in  San  Domingo ; 
so  that,  for  example  in  1738,  there  were  built  in  that  town 
forty-one  topsail  vessels.  Peace  on  the  eastern  frontier 
revived  the  youthful  maritime  enterprise  of  Maine,  and  its 
settlements  began  to  obtain  a  fixed  prosperity.  Of  Con- 
necticut, the  swarming  population  spread  over  all  its  soil, 
and  occupied  even  its  hills ;  for  its  whole  extent  was  pro- 
tected against  the  desolating  inroads  of  savages.  The  selfish 
policy  of  its  governors  and  its  royalist  party  delayed  the  in- 
crease of  New  York.  Pennsylvania,  as  the  land  of  promise, 
was  still  the  refuge  of  the  oppressed.  We  shall  "  soon 
have  a  German  colony,"  wrote  Logan,  in  1726,  "  so  JJ^^ 
many  thousands  of  Palatines  are  already  in  the  coun- 


534  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 

try ; "  adding,  three  years  later  :  "  We  are  also  very  much 
surprised  at  the  vast  crowds  of  people  pouring  in  upon  us 
from  the  north  of  Ireland.  Both  these  sorts  sit  frequently 
down  on  any  spot  of  vacant  land.  They  say  the  proprietary 
invited  people  to  come  and  settle  his  country.  Both  pre- 
tend they  would  pay,  but  not  one  in  twenty  has  any  thing 
to  pay  with."  Nor  did  the  south-west  range  of  moun- 
tains, from  the  James  to  the  Potomac,  fail  to  attract 
emigrants;  and,  in  1732,  the  valley  of  Virginia  received 
white  inhabitants. 

While  the  Palatinate  poured  forth  its  sons  from  their  de- 
vastated fields ;  while  the  Scotch,  who  had  made  a  sojourn 
in  Ireland,  abandoned  the  culture  of  lands  where  they  were 
but  tenants,  and,  crowding  to  America,  established  them- 
selves as  freeholders  in  almost  every  part  of  the  United 
States,  from  New  Hampshire  to  Carolina,  —  the  progress  of 
colonization  was  mainly  due  to  the  rapid  increase  of  the 
descendants  of  former  settlers.  West  of  the  Alleghanies 
there  were  no  European  settlements,  except  that  traders, 
especially  from  Carolina,  had  ventured  among  the  Indians, 
and,  becoming  wild  like  the  men  with  whom  they  trafiicked, 
had  established  their  houses  among  the  Cherokees,  the 
Muskohgees,  and  the  Chickasaws.  No  settlements  existed 
on  any  stream  that  flows  westward ;  the  more  remote  ones 
were  made  by  herdsmen,  who  pastured  beeves  upon  canes 
and  natural  grasses,  and  now  and  then  rallied  the  cattle  at 
central  "  Cowpens."  Philanthropy  opened  the  way  beyond 
the  Savannah.  The  growth  of  the  colonies  pleased  the 
pride  of  England ;  and  a  British  poet  thus  gave  utterance 
to  the  admiration  of  his  countrymen  : 

Lo  !  swarming  southward  on  rejoicing  suns, 
Gay  colonies  extend,  —  the  calm  retreat 
Of  undeserved  distress,  the  better  home 
Of  those  whom  bigots  chase  from  foreign  lands. 
Not  built  on  rapine,  servitude,  and  woe. 
But  bound  by  social  freedom,  firm  they  rise. 
Happy  America !  to  which  Providence  gave  the  tranquil- 
lity necessary  for  her  growth,  as  w^ell  as  the  trials  which 
were  to  discipline  her  for  action. 


Chap.XLI.     the  colonies  under  GEORGE  II.  535 

The  effects  of  the  American  system  of  social  freedom 
were  best  exhibited  in  the  colonies  which  approached  the 
most  nearly  to  independence/  More  than  a  century  ago, 
"the  charter  governments  were  celebrated  for  their  excel- 
lent laws  and  mild  administration ;  for  the  security  of  lib- 
erty and  property;  for  the  encouragement  of  virtue  and 
suppression  of  vice ;  for  promoting  letters  by  erecting  free 
schools  and  collesjes."  Amons^  the  most  distiuG^uished  sons 
of  Ireland  of  that  day  was  George  Berkeley,  who,  like  Penn, 
reposed  his  hopes  for  humanity  on  America.  Versed  in 
ancient  learning,  exact  science,  -and  modern  literature,  dis- 
ciplined by  travel  and  reflection,  adverse  factions  agreed 
in  ascribing  to  him  "  every  virtue  under  heaven."  Cherished 
by  those  who  were  the  pride  of  English  letters  and  society, 
favored  with  unsolicited  dignities  and  revenues,  he  required 
for  his  happiness,  not  fortune  or  preferment,  but  a  real 
progress  in  knowledge.  The  material  tendencies  of  the 
age  in  which  he  lived  were  hateful  to  his  purity  of  senti- 
ment ;  and  having  a  mind  kindred  with  Plato  and  the 
Alexandrine  philosophers,  with  Barclay  and  Malebranche, 
he  held  that  the  external  world  was  wholly  subordinate 
to  intelligence ;  that  true  existence  can  be  predicated  of 
spirits  alone.  He  did  not  distrust  the  senses,  being  rather 
a  close  and  exact  observer  of  their  powers,  and  finely  dis- 
criminating between  impressions  made  on  them  and  the 
deductions  of  reason  from  those  impressions.  Far  from 
being  skeptical,  he  sought  to  give  to  faith  the  highest 
certainty  by  deriving  all  knowledge  from  absolutely  perfect 
intelligence,  from  God.  If  he  could  but  "  expel  matter  out 
of  nature,"  if  he  could  establish  the  supremacy  of  spirit  as 
the  sole  creative  power  and  active  being,  then  would  the 
slavish  and  corrupt  theories  of  Epicurus  and  of  Hobbes  be 
cut  up  by  the  roots.  Thus  he  sought  "  gently  to  unbind  the 
ligaments  which  chain  the  soul  to  the  earth,  and  to  assist 
her  flight  upwards  towards  the  sovereign  good."  For  the 
application  of  such  views,  Europe  of  the  eighteenth  century 
offered  no  theatre.  Regarding  "  the  well-being  of  all  men 
of  all  nations  "  as  the  design  in  which  the  actions  of  each 
individual  should  concur,  he  repaired  to  the  new  hemisphere 


536  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLI. 

to  found  a  university.  The  Island  of  Bermuda,  so  famed 
•in  Europe  for  its  delicious  climate,  at  first  selected  as  its  site, 
was  abandoned  for  Newport  within  our  America,  of  which 
he  was  for  more  than  two  years  a  resident.  But  opinion 
in  England  did  not  favor  his  design.  "  From  the  labor  and 
luxury  of  the  plantations,"  English  politicians  said,  "  great 
advantages  may  ensue  to  the  mother  country ;  yet  the 
advancement  of  literature,  and  the  improvement  in  arts  and 
sciences  in  our  American  colonies,  can  never  be  of  any 
service  to  the  British  state."  The  funds  that  had  been 
regarded  as  pledged  to  the  university,  in  which  Indians 
were  to  be  trained  in  wisdom,  missionaries  educated  for 
works  of  good,  science  and  truth  advanced  and  disseminated, 
were  diverted  to  pay  the  dowry  of  the  princess  royal. 
Disappointed,  yet  not  irritated,  Berkeley  returned  to  Eu- 
rope, to  endow  a  library  in  Rhode  Island ;  to  cherish  the 
interests  of  Harvard ;  to  gain  a  right  to  be  gratefully 
remembered  at  New  Haven ;  to  encourage  the  foundation 
of  a  college  at  New  York.  Advanced  to  a  bishopric,  the 
heart  of  the  liberal  prelate  was  still  in  America;  and  his 
benevolence  dictated  this  prophecy : 

In  happy  climes,  the  seat  of  innocence. 
Where  nature  guides,  and  virtue  rules ; 

Where  men  shall  not  impose  for  truth  and  sense 
The  pedantry  of  courts  and  schools,  — 

There  shall  be  sung  another  golden  age,  — 

The  rise  of  empire  and  of  arts ; 
The  good  and  great  inspiring  epic  rage ; 

The  wisest  heads  and  noblest  hearts. 

Not  such  as  Europe  breeds  in  her  decay ; 

Such  as  she  bred  when  fresh  and  young, 
When  heavenly  flame  did  animate  her  clay, 

By  future  poets  shall  be  sung. 

Westward  the  course  of  empire  takes  its  way ; 

The  four  first  acts  already  past, 
A  fifth  shall  close  the  drama  with  the  day ; 

Time's  noblest  offspring  is  the  last. 


1722.  THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  II.  537 

To  free  schools  and  colleges  the  periodical  press  had  been 
added,  and  newspapers  began  their  office  in  America  as  the 
ministers  to  curiosity  and  the  guides  and  organs  of  opinion. 
On  the  twenty- fourth  day  of  April,  in  1704,  the  Boston 
"  News-Letter,"  the  first  ever  published  on  the  western  conti- 
nent, saw  the  light  in  the  metropolis  of  New  England.  In 
1719,  it  obtained  a  rival  at  Boston,  and  was  imitated  at 
Philadelphia.  In  1740,  the  number  of  newspapers  in  the 
English  colonies  on  the  continent  had  increased  to  eleven, 
of  which  one  appeared  in  South  Carolina,  one  in  Virginia, 
three  in  Pennsylvania,  —  one  of  them  being  in  German,  — 
one  in  New  York,  and  the  remaining  five  in  Boston.  The 
sheet  at  first  used  was  but  of  the  foolscap  size  ;  and  but  one, 
or  even  but  a  half  of  one,  was  issued  weekly.  The  papers 
sought  support  rather  by  modestly  telling  the  news  of  the 
day,  than  by  engaging  in  conflicts  ;  they  had  no  political 
theories  to  enforce,  no  revolutions  in  faith  to  hasten.  At 
Boston,  indeed,  where  the  pulpit  had  marshalled  Quakers 
and  witches  to  the  gallows,  the  New  England  "  Cou- 
rant,"  the  fourth  American  periodical,  was,  in  August,  ^ig^^k 
1721,  established  by  James  Franklin  as  an  organ  of 
independent  opinion.  Its  temporary  success  was  advanced 
by  Benjamin,  his  brother  and  apprentice,  a  boy  of  fifteen, 
who  wrote  pieces  for  its  columns,  worked  in  composing  the 
types  as  well  as  in  printing  off  the  sheets,  and,  as  carrier, 
distributed  the  papers  to  the  customers.  The  sheet  satirized 
hypocrisy,  and  spoke  of  religious  knaves  as  of  all  knaves  the 
worst.  This  was  described  as  tending  "  to  abuse  the  minis- 
ters of  religion  in  a  manner  which  was  intolerable."  "  I  can 
well  remember,"  writes  Increase  Mather,  then  more  than 
fourscore  years  of  age,  "  when  the  civil  government  would 
have  taken  an  effectual  course  to  suppress  such  a 
cursed  libel."  In  July,  1722,  a  resolve  passed  the  1722. 
council,  appointing  a  censor  for  the  press  of  James 
Franklin ;  but  the  house  refused  its  concurrence.  The 
ministers  persevered ;  and  in  January,  1723,  a  committee 
of  inquiry  was  raised  by  the  legislature.  Benjamin,  being 
examined,  escaped  with  an  admonition ;  James,  the  pub- 
lisher, refusing  to  discover  the  author  of  the  offence,  was 


538  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 

kept  in  jail  for  a  month  ;  his  paper  was  censured  as  reflect- 
ing injuriously  on  the  reverend  ministers  of  the  gospel ;  and, 
by  vote  of  the  house  and  council,  he  was  forbidden  to  print 
it,  "except  it  be  first  supervised." 

Vexed  at   the    arbitrary  proceedings ;   willing   to 

escape  from  a  town  where  good  people  pointed  with 
horror  at  his  freedom ;    indignant,  also,  at  the  tyranny  of 

a  brother,  who,  as  a  passionate  master,  often  beat  his 
Oct.        apprentice,  —  in  October,  1723,  Benjamin  Franklin, 

then  but  seventeen  years  old,  sailed  clandestinely  for 
New  York ;  and,  finding  there  no  employment,  crossed  to 
Amboy ;  went  on  foot  to  the  Delaware ;  for  want  of  a 
wind,  rowed  in  a  boat  from  Burlington  to  Philadelphia; 
and  bearing  marks  of  his  labor  at  the  oar,  weary,  hungry, 
having  for  his  whole  stock  of  cash  a  single  dollar,  the  run- 
away apprentice  —  the  humble  pupil  of  the  free  schools  of 
Boston,  rich  in  the  boundless  hope  of  youth  and  the  uncon- 
scious power  of  genius  which  modesty  adorned  —  stepped 
on  shore  to  seek  food  and  occupation. 

On  the  deep  foundations  of  sobriety,  frugality,  and 
industry,  the  young  journeyman  built  his  fortunes  and 
fame  ;  and  he  soon  came  to  have  a  printing-office  of  his 
own.  Toiling  early  and  late,  wnth  his  own  hands  he  set 
types  and  worked  at  the  press ;  with  his  own  hands  would 
trundle  to  the  office  in  a  wheelbarrow  the  reams  of  paper 
which  he  was  to  use.  His  ingenuity  was  such  he  could 
form  letters,  make  types  and  woodcuts,  and  engrave  vign- 
ettes in  copper.  The  assembly  of  Pennsylvania  chose  him 
its  printer.  He  planned  a  newspaper;  and,  when  he  became 
its  proprietor  and  editor,  he  defended  freedom  of  thought 
and  speech,  and  the  inalienable  power  of  the  people.  He 
proposed  improvements  in  the  schools  of  Philadelphia,  in- 
vented the  system  of  subscription  libraries,  and  laid  the 
foundation  of  one  that  was  long  the  most  considerable 
library  in  America;  he  suggested  the  establishment  of  an 
academy,  which  has  ripened  into  a  university ;  he  saw  the 
benefit  of  concert  in  the  pursuit  of  science,  and  gathered  a 
philosophical  society  for  its  advancement.  The  intelligent 
and  highly  cultivated  Logan  bore  testimony  to  his  merits : 


1749.  THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  IJ.  539 

"  Our  most  ingenious  printer  has  the  clearest  understand- 
ing, with  extreme  modesty.  He  is  certainly  an  extraordi- 
nary man  ; "  "  of  a  singularly  good  judgment,  but  of  equal 
modesty ;  "  "  excellent,  yet  humble."  "  Do  not  imagine,'* 
he  adds, "that  I  overdo  in  my  character  of  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin, for  I  am  rather  short  in  it."  When  the  students  of 
nature  began  to  investigate  the  wonders  of  electricity, 
Franklin  excelled  all  observers  in  the  simplicity  and  lucid 
exposition  of  his  experiments,  and  in  "  sagacity  and  power 
of  scientific  generalization."  It  was  he  who  first 
suggested  the  explanation  of  thunder-gusts  and  the  1749. 
northern  lights  on  electrical  principles,  and,  in  the 
summer  of  1752,  going  out  into  the  fields,  with  no  instrument 
but  a  kite,  no  companion  but  his  son,  established  his  theory 
by  obtaining  a  line  of  connection  with  a  thunder-cloud. 
Nor  did  he  cease  till  he  had  made  the  lio^htninsc  a  house- 
hold  pastime,  taught  his  family  to  catch  the  subtile  fluid  in 
its  leaps  between  the  earth  and  the  sky,  and  ascertained 
how  it  might  be  compelled  to  pass  harmlessly  over  the 
dwellings  of  men. 

Franklin  looked  quietly  and  deeply  into  the  secrets  of 
nature.  His  clear  understanding  was  never  perverted  by 
passion  nor  corrupted  by  the  pride  of  theory.  The  son  of  a 
rigid  Calvinist,  the  grandson  of  a  tolerant  Quaker,  he  had 
from  boyhood  been  familiar  not  only  with  theological  sub- 
tilties,  but  with  a  catholic  respect  for  freedom  of  mind. 
Skeptical  of  tradition  as  the  basis  of  faith,  he  respected 
reason  rather  than  authority ;  and,  after  a  momentary  lapse 
into  fatalism,  he  gained  with  increasing  years  an  increas- 
ing trust  in  the  overruling  providence  of  God.  Adhering 
to  none  of  all  the  religions  in  the  colonies,  he  yet  devoutly, 
though  without  form,  adhered  to  religion.  But  though 
famous  as  a  disputant,  and  having  a  natural  aptitude  for 
metaphysics,  he  obeyed  the  tendency  of  his  age,  and  sought 
by  observation  to  win  an  insight  into  the  mysteries  of 
being.  The  best  observers  praise  his  method  most.  He 
so  sincerely  loved  truth,  that  in  his  pursuit  of  her  she  met 
him  half-way.  Without  prejudice  and  without  bias,  he  dis- 
cerned intuitively  the  identity  of  the  laws  of  nature  with 


640 


COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 


those  of  which  humanity  is  conscious  ;  so  that  his  mind  was 
like  a  mirror,  in  which  the  universe,  as  it  reflected  itself, 
revealed  her  laws.  His  morality,  repudiating  ascetic  severi- 
ties, and  the  system  which  enjoins  them,  was  indulgent  to 
appetites  of  which  he  abhorred  the  sway ;  but  his  affec- 
tions were  of  a  calm  intensity  ;  in  all  his  career,  the  love  of 
man  held  the  mastery  over  personal  interest.  He  had  not 
the  imagination  which  inspires  the  bard  or  kindles  the 
orator ;  but  an  exquisite  propriety,  parsimonious  of  orna- 
ment, gave  ease,  correctness,  and  graceful  simplicity  even 
to  his  most  careless  writings.  In  life,  also,  his  tastes  were 
delicate.  Indifferent  to  the  pleasures  of  the  table,  he  rel- 
ished the  delights  of  music  and  harmony,  of  which  he  en- 
larged the  instruments.  His  blandness  of  temper,  his 
modesty,  the  benignity  of  his  manners,  made  him  the  fa- 
vorite of  intelligent  society ;  and,  with  healthy  cheerfulness, 
he  derived  pleasure  from  books,  from  philosophy,  from  con- 
versation, —  now  administering  consolation  to  the  sorrower, 
now  indulging  in  light-hearted  gayety.  In  his  intercourse, 
the  universality  of  his  perceptions  bore,  perhaps,  the  char- 
acter of  humor ;  but,  while  he  clearly  discerned  the  contrast 
between  the  grandeur  of  the  universe  and  the  feebleness  of 
man,  a  serene  benevolence  saved  him  from  contempt  of  his 
race  or  disgust  at  its  toils.  To  superficial  observers,  he 
might  have  seemed  as  an  alien  from  speculative  truth,  lim- 
iting himself  to  the  world  of  the  senses ;  and  yet,  in  study, 
and  among  men,  his  mind  always  sought  to  discover  and 
apply  the  general  principles  by  which  nature  and  affairs  are 
controlled,  —  now  deducing  from  the  theory  of  caloric  im- 
provements in  fireplaces  and  lanterns,  and  now  advancing 
human  freedom  by  firm  inductions  from  the  inalienable 
rights  of  man.  Never  professing  enthusiasm,  never  making 
a  paradfe  of  sentiment,  his  practical  wisdom  was  sometimes 
mistaken  for  the  offspring  of  selfish  prudence  ;  yet  his  hope 
was  steadfast,  like  that  hope  which  rests  on  the  Rock  of 
Ages,  and  his  conduct  was  as  unerring  as  though  the  light 
that  led  him  was  a  light  from  Heaven.  He  never  antici- 
pated action  by  theories  of  self-sacrificing  virtue ;  and  yet, 
in  the  moments  of  intense  activity,  he  from  the  abodes  of 


Chap.  XLI.      THE  COLONIES  UNDER  GEORGE  it  541 

ideal  truth  brought  down  and  applied  to  the  affairs  of  life 
the  principles  of  goodness,  as  unostentatiously  as  became 
the  man  who  with  a  kite  and  hempen  string  drew  the 
lightning  from  the  skies.  He  separated  himself  so  little 
from  his  age  that  he  has  been  called  the  representative  of 
materialism  ;  and  yet,  when  he  thought  on  religion,  his 
mind  passed  beyond  reliance  on  sects  to  faith  in  God ; 
when  he  wrote  on  politics,  he  founded  freedom  on  princi- 
ples that  know  no  change ;  when  he  turned  an  observing 
eye  on  nature,  he  passed  from  the  effect  to  the  cause,  from 
individual  appearances  to  universal  laws  ;  when  he  reflected 
on  history,  his  philosophic  mind  found  gladness  and  repos6 
in  the  clear  anticipation  of  the  progress  of  humanity. 

Nor  may  it  be  omitted  that  Thomas  Godfrey,  of  Philadel- 
phia, was  the  first  to  invent  the  instrument  by  which  the  mar- 
iner can  take  the  altitude  of  the  sun  on  the  roughest  sea. 

America,  by  its  increase  in  population  and  by  the  genius 
of  its  sons,  ripened  for  independence  ;  but  still  there  was  no 
union  :  neither  danger  from  abroad,  nor  English  invasions  of 
liberty,  had  as  yet  roused  the  colonies  to  common  action. 
Not  even  the  proposal  to  abrogate  charters  could  excite  a 
united  opposition.  Public  sentiment  in  America  so  little 
respected  the  proprietary  governments  that  in  1720  the 
three  New  England  charter  governments  were  left  to  con- 
tend for  their  privileges  alone.  The  relations  with  the 
Iroquois  had  a  greater  tendency  to  effect  a  concert  of  ac- 
tion ;  they  interested  New  England  on  the  east ;  and  in 
1722,  at  a  congress  in  Albany,  Virginia,  as  well  as  Pennsyl- 
vania, was  represented  by  its  governor. 

In  the  separate  colonies,  the  spirit  of  liberty  and  the 
desire  of  self-direction  everywhere  prevailed.  In  Pennsyl- 
vania, there  existed  the  fewest  checks  on  the  power  of  the 
people.  "  Popular  zeal  raged  as  high  there  as  in  any  coun- 
try ; "  and  Logan  wrote  despondingly  to  the  proprietary : 
"Faction  prevails  among  the  people;  *  liberty  and  privi- 
leges '  are  ever  the  cry."  "  This  government  under  you 
is  not  possibly  tenable  without  a  miracle."  The  world  was 
inexperienced  in  the  harmlessness  of  the  ferment  of  the 
public  mind,  where  that  mind  deliberates,  decides,  and  gov- 


642  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLL 

1729.  erns.  To  the  timid  eye  of  that  day,  there  seemed 
"a  real  danger  of  insurrection."  The  assemblies 
were  troublesome ;  the  spirit  of  insubordination  grew  by 
indulgence;  "squatters"  increased  so  rapidly  that  their 
number  threatened  to  become  their  security.  And  Mary- 
land was  as  restless  as  Pennsylvania;  Lord  Baltimore, 
though  "  a  very  reasonable  gentleman,  was  most  in- 
1728.  solently  treated  by  some  of  his  assemblies."  The 
result  was  inexplicable  on  the  old  theories  of  govern- 
ment. "One  perplexity  had  succeeded  another,  as  waves 
follow  waves  in  the  sea,  while  the  settlement  of  Penn  had 
still  prospered  and  thriven  at  all  times  since  its  beginning." 
And  yet  Logan  could  not  shake  off  distrust  of  the  issue  of 
the  experiment.  With  "  a  long  enjoyment  of  a  free  air  and 
almost  unrestrained  liberty,"  wrote  he,  "  we  must  not  have 
the  least  appearance  even  of  a  militia,  nor  any  other  officers 
than  sheriffs  chosen  by  the  multitude  themselves,  and  a  few 
constables,  part  of  themselves,  to  enforce  the  powers  of  gov- 
ernment ;  to  which  add  a  most  licentious  use  of  thinking, 
in  relation  to  those  powers,  most  industriously  inculcated 
and  fomented." 

Through  the  press,  no  one  was  so  active  as  Benjamin 
Franklin.  His  newspaper  defended  absolute  freedom  of 
speech  and  of  the  press,  for  he  held  that  falsehood  alone 
dreads  attack  and  cries  out  for  auxiliaries,  while  truth 
scorns  the  aid  of  the  secular  arm  and  triumphs  by  her  in- 
nate strength.  He  rejected  with  disdain  the  "  policy  of 
arbitrary  government,"  which  can  esteem  truth  itself  to  be  a 
libel.  Nor  did  he  fail  to  defend  "  popular  governments,  as 
resting  on  the  wisest  reasons."  In  "  the  multitude,  which 
hates  and  fears  ambition,"  he  saw  the  true  counterpoise  to 
unjust  designs;  and  he  defended  the  mass,  as  unable  "to 
judge  amiss  on  any  essential  points."  "  The  judgment  of  a 
whole  people,"  such  was  the  sentiment  of  Franklin,  "if 
unbiassed  by  faction,  undeluded  by  the  tricks  of  designing 
men,  is  infallible."  That  the  voice  of  the  people  is  the 
voice  of  God,  he  declared  to  be  universally  true ;  and  there- 
fore "  the  people  cannot,  in  any  sense,  divest  themselves  of 
the  supreme  authority."      Thus  he   asserted  the   common 


Chap.XLI.  the  colonies  under  GEORGE  II.      543 

rights  of  mankind,  by  illustrating  "  eternal  truths,  that  can- 
not be  shaken  even  with  the  foundations  of  the  world." 
Such  was  public  opinion  in  Pennsylvania  more  than  a  cen- 
tury ago. 

Virginia  was  still  more  in  contrast  with  England.  The 
eighteenth  century  was  the  age  of  commercial  ambition ; 
and  Virginia  relinquished  its  commerce  to  foreign  factors. 
In  the  age  when  nations  rushed  into  debt,  when  stock- 
jobbers and  bankers  competed  with  landholders  for  political 
power,  Virginia  paid  its  taxes  in  tobacco,  and  alone  of  the 
colonies,  resisting  the  universal  tendency  of  the  age,  had  no 
public  debt,  no  banks,  no  bills  of  credit,  no  paper  money. 
The  committee  of  its  burgesses  did  not  fear  "  to  speak  ir- 
reverently of  the  king's  government ; "  the  people  were  apt 
to  esteem  "  a  friendship  for  the  governor  incompatible  with 
the  interest  of  the  country ; "  but,  though  fond  of  self-direc- 
tion, they  had  no  sullen  griefs,  no  brooding  discontent. 

The  colonies  were  forming  a  character  of  their  own. 
Throughout  the  continent,  national  freedom  and  indepen- 
dence were  gaining  vigor  and  maturity.  They  were  not  the 
offspring  of  deliberate  forethought :  they  grew  like  the  lilies, 
which  neither  toil  nor  spin. 


544  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLIL 


CHAPTER  XLIL 

BEITISH     MONOPOLIES     OF     THE     SLAVE-TRADE.        COLONIZA- 
TION    OF     GEORGIA. 

The  moral  world  is  swayed  by  general  laws.  They 
extend  not  over  inanimate  nature  only,  but  over  man  and 
nations ;  over  the  policy  of  rulers  and  the  opinion  of  masses. 
Event  succeeds  event  according  to  their  influence ;  amidst 
the  jars  of  passions  and  interests,  amidst  wars  and  alliances, 
commerce  and  conflicts,  they  form  the  guiding  principle  of 
civilization,  which  marshals  incongruous  incidents  into  their 
just  places,  and  arranges  checkered  groups  in  clear  and 
harmonious  order.  Yet  let  not  human  arrogance  assume  to 
know  intuitively,  without  observation,  the  tendency  of  the 
ages.  Research  must  be  unwearied,  and  must  be  conducted 
with  indifference  ;  as  the  student  of  natural  history,  in  exam- 
ining even  the  humblest  flower,  seeks  instruments  that  may 
unfold  its  wonderful  structure,  without  color  and  without 
distortion.  For  the  historic  inquirer  to  swerve  from  exact 
observation  would  be  as  absurd  as  for  the  astronomer  to 
break  his  telescopes,  and  compute  the  path  of  a  planet  by 
conjecture.  Of  success,  too,  there  is  a  sure  criterion ;  for, 
as  every  false  statement  contains  a  contradiction,  truth 
alone  possesses  harmony.  Truth  also,  and  truth  alone,  is 
permanent.  The  selfish  passions  of  a  party  are  as  evanes- 
cent as  the  material  interests  involved  in  the  transient  con- 
flict: they  may  deserve  to  be  described;  they  never  can 
inspire ;  and  the  narrative  which  takes  from  them  its  bias 
will  hurry  to  oblivion  as  rapidly  as  the  hearts  in  which 
they  were  kindled  moulder  to  ashes.  But  facts  faithfully 
ascertained,  and  placed  in  proper  contiguity,  become  of 
themselves  the  firm  links  of  a  brightly  burnished  chain, 
connecting  events  with  their  causes,  and  marking  the  line 


Chap.  XLIL        MONOPOLY  OF   THE   SLAVE-TRADE.  545 

along  which  the  power  of  truth  is  conveyed  from  generation 
to  generation. 

Events  that  are  past  are  beyond  change,  and,  where  they 
merit  to  be  known,  can  in  their  general  aspect  be  known 
accurately.  The  constitution  of  the  human  mind  varies 
only  in  details ;  its  elements  are  the  same  always  ;  and  the 
multitude,  possessing  but  a  combination  of  the  powers  and 
passions  of  which  each  one  is  conscious,  is  subject  to  the 
same  laws  which  control  individuals.  Humanity,  constantly 
enriched  and  cultivated  by  the  truths  it  develops  and  the 
inventions  it  amasses,  has  a  life  of  its  own,  and  yet  possesses 
no  element  that  is  not  common  to  each  of  its  members.  By 
comparison  of  document  with  document ;  by  an  analysis  of 
facts,  and  the  reference  of  each  of  them  to  the  laws  of 
intelligence  which  it  illustrates  ;  by  separating  the  idea 
which  inspires  combined  action  from  the  forms  it  as- 
sumes ;  by  comparing  events  with  the  great  movement  of 
nations, — historic  truth  may  establish  itself  as  a  science; 
and  the  principles  that  govern  human  affairs,  extending  like 
a  path  of  light  from  century  to  century,  become  the  highest 
demonstration  of  the  superintending  providence  of  God. 

The  inference  that  there  is  progress  in  human  affairs  is 
warranted.  The  trust  of  our  race  has  ever  been  in  the 
coming  of  better  times.  Universal  history  does  but  seek  to 
relate  "  the  sum  of  all  God's  works  of  providence." 
In  America,  the  first  conception  of  its  ofiice,  in  the  1739. 
mind  of  Jonathan  Edwards,  though  still  cramped 
and  perverted  by  theological  forms  not  derived  from  obser- 
vation, was  nobler  than  the  theory  of  Yico:  more  grand 
and  general  than  the  method  of  Bossuet,  it  embraced  in  its 
outline  the  whole  "  work  of  redemption,"  —  the  history  of 
the  influence  of  all  moral  truth  in  the  gradual  regeneration 
of  humanity.  The  New  England  divine,  in  his  quiet  asso- 
ciation w^ith  the  innocence  and  simplicity  of  rural  life,  knew 
that,  in  every  succession  of  revolutions,  the  cause  of  civil- 
ization and  moral  reform  is  advanced.  "  The  new  crea- 
tion," such  are  his  words,  "is  more  excellent  than  the  old. 
So  it  ever  is,  that,  when  one  thing  is  removed  by  God  to 
make  way  for  another,  the  new  excels  the  old."     "The 


546  COLONIAL  HISTORr.  Chap.  XLII. 

wheels  of  Providence,"  he  adds,  "  are  not  turned  about  by- 
blind  chance,  but  they  are  full  of  eyes  round  about,  and  they 
are  guided  by  the  Spirit  of  God.  Where  the  Spirit  goes, 
they  go."  Nothing  appears  more  self-determined  than  the 
volitions  of  each  individual ;  and  nothing  is  more  certain  than 
that  the  providence  of  God  will  overrule  them  for  good. 
The  finite  will  of  man,  free  in  its  individuality,  is  in  the 
aggregate  subordinate  to  general  laws.  This  is  the  reason 
why  evil  is  self-destructive ;  why  truth,  when  it  is  once 
generated,  is  sure  to  live  for  ever ;  why  freedom  and  justice, 
though  resisted  and  restrained,  renew  the  contest  from  age 
to  age,  confident  that  messengers  from  heaven  fight  on  their 
side,  and  that  the  stars  in  their  courses  war  against  their 
foes.  There  would  seem  to  be  no  harmony  and  no  con- 
sistent tendency  to  one  great  end,  in  the  confused  events  of 
the  reigns  of  George  II.  of  England,  and  Louis  XY.  of 
France,  where  legislation  was  now  surrendered  to  the  mer- 
cantile passion  for  gain,  was  now  swayed  by  the  ambition 
and  avarice  of  the  mistresses  of  kings ;  where  the  venal 
corruption  of  public  men,  the  open  profligacy  of  courts,  the 
greedy  cupidity  of  trade,  conspired  in  exercising  dominion 
over  the  civilized  community.  The  political  world  was 
without  form  and  void ;  yet  the  Spirit  of  God  was  moving 
over  the  chaos  of  human  passions  and  human  caprices, 
bringing  forth  the  firm  foundations  on  which  better  hopes 
were  to  rest,  and  setting  in  the  firmament  the  lights  that 
were  to  guide  the  nations. 

England,  France,  and  Spain  occupied  all  the  continent, 
nearly  all  the  islands,  of  North  America ;  each  established 
Over  its  colonies  an  oppressive  metropolitan  monopoly. 
Had  they  been  united,  no  colony  could  have  rebelled  suc- 
cessfully ;  but  Great  Britain,  while  she  vigorously  enforced 
her  own  acts  of  navigation,  disregarded  those  of  Spain. 
Strictly  maintaining  the  exclusive  commerce  with  her  own 
colonies,  she  coveted  intercourse  with  the  Spanish  islands 
and  naain;  and  was  about  to  give  to  the  world,  for  the  first 
time  in  history,  the  spectacle  of  a  war  for  trade,  —  a  war 
which  hastened  the  downfall  of  commercial  restrictions  and 
the  independence  of  America. 


Chap.  XLII.        MONOPOLY  OF  THE   SLAVE-TRADE.         547 

A  part  of  the  holders  of  the  debt  of  Great  Britain  had 
been  incorporated  into  a  company,  with  the  exclusive  trade 
to  the  South  Seas.  But  as  Spain,  having  occupied  much  of 
the  American  coast  in  those  seas,  claimed  a  monopoly  of  its 
commerce,  the  grant  was  worthless,  unless  that  monopoly 
could  be  successfully  invaded;  and,  for  this  end,  the 
benefit  of  the  assiento  treaty  was  assigned  to  the  South 
Sea  company. 

In  1719,  the  capital  of  the  company  was  increased  by 
new  subscriptions  of  national  debt ;  and,  in  the  next  year, 
it  was  proposed  to  incorporate  into  its  stock  all  the  national 
debt.  The  system  resembled  that  of  Law ;  but  the  latter 
was  connected  with  a  bank  of  issue,  and  became  a  war 
against  specie.  In  England,  there  was  no  attempt,  directly 
or  indirectly,  to  exile  specie,  no  increase  of  the  circulating 
medium,  but  only  an  increase  of  stocks.  The  parties  im- 
plicated suffered  from  fraud  and  folly :  the  stock-jobbers ; 
they  who  had  parted  with  their  certificates  of  the  national 
debt  for  stock  in  the  company ;  they  who,  hurried  away  by 
a  blind  avidity,  had  engaged  in  other  "bubbles,"  —  were 
ruined ;  but  the  country  was  not  impoverished. 

Enough  of  the  South  Sea  company  survived  to  execute 
the  contract  for  negroes  and  to  conduct  an  illicit  com- 
merce with  Spanish  America.  "  Ambition,  avarice,  distress, 
disappointment,  and  the  complicated  vices  that  tend  to 
render  the  mind  of  man  uneasy,  filled  all  places  and  all 
hearts  in  the  English  nation."  While  dreams  of  the  acqui- 
sition of  Florida,  with  the  sole  use  of  the  Bahama  Channel ; 
of  the  conquest  of  Mexico  and  Peru,  with  their  real  and 
their  imagined  wealth,  —  rose  up  to  dazzle  the  minds  of  the 
restless,  Jamaica  became  the  centre  of  an  extensive  smug- 
gling trade ;  and  slave-ships,  deriving  their  passport  from 
the  assiento  treaty,  were  the  ready  instruments  of  contra- 
band cupidity. 

The  great  activity  of  the  English  slave-trade  does  not 
acquire  its  chief  interest  for  American  history  by  the 
transient  conflict  to  which  it  led.  While  the  South  Sea 
company  satisfied  but  imperfectly  its  passion  for  wealth 
by  a  monopoly  of  the  supply  of  negroes  for  the  Spanish 


548  COLONIAL  HISTOET.  Chap.  XLIL 

islands  and  main,  the  African  company  and  independent 
traders  were  still  more  busy  in  sending  negroes  to  the  col- 
onies of  England.  To  this  eagerness,  encouraged  by  Eng- 
lish legislation,  fostered  by  royal  favor,  and  enforced  for 
a  century  by  every  successive  ministry  of  England,  it  is 
due  that  one  sixth  part  of  the  population  of  the  United 
States  —  a  moiety  of  those  who  dwell  in  the  five  states 
nearest  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  —  are  descendants  of  Africans. 

The  colored  men  who  were  imported  into  our  colonies, 
sometimes  by  way  of  the  West  Indies,  and  sometimes, 
especially  for  the  south,  directly  from  the  Old  World, 
were  sought  all  along  the  African  coast,  for  thirty  degrees 
together,  from  Cape  Blanco  to  Loango  St.  Paul's ;  from  the 
Great  Desert  of  Sahara  to  the  kingdom  of  Angola,  or  per- 
haps even  to  the  borders  of  the  land  of  the  Kaffres.  It 
is  not  possible  to  relate  precisely  in  what  bay  they  were 
respectively  laden,  from  what  sunny  cottages  they  were 
kidnapped,  from  what  more  direful  captivity  they  were 
rescued.  The  traders  in  men  have  not  been  careful  to 
record  the  lineage  of  their  victims.  They  were  chiefly 
gathered  from  gangs  that  were  marched  from  the  far  inte- 
rior ;  so  that  the  freight  of  a  single  ship  might  be  composed 
of  persons  of  different  languages,  and  of  nations  altogether 
strange  to  each  other.  Nor  was  there  uniformity  of  com- 
plexion :  of  those  brought  to  our  country,  some  were  from 
tribes  of  which  the  skin  was  of  a  tawny  yellow. 

The  purchases  in  Africa  were  made,  in  part,  of  convicts 
punished  with  slavery,  or  mulcted  in  a  fine  which  was  dis- 
charged by  their  sale ;  of  debtors  sold,  though  but  rarely, 
into  foreign  bondage ;  of  children  sold  by  their  parents ; 
of  kidnapped  villagers  ;  of  captives  taken  in  war.  Hence 
the  sea-coast  and  the  confines  of  hostile  nations  were  laid 
waste.  But  the  chief  source  of  supply  was  from  swarms 
of  those  born  in  a  state  of  slavery ;  for  the  despotisms, 
the  superstitions,  and  the  usages  of  Africa  had  multiplied 
bondage.  In  the  upper  country,  on  the  Senegal  and  the 
Gambia,  three  fourths  of  the  inhabitants  were  not  free; 
and  the  slave's  master  was  the  absolute  lord  of  the  slave's 
children.     The  trade  in  slaves,  whether  for  the  cai-avans 


Chap.  XLII.        MONOPOLY  OF   THE    SLAVE-TRADE.        549 

of  the  Moors  or  for  the  European  ships,  was  chiefly  sup- 
plied from  the  natural  increase.  In  the  healthy  and  fertile 
uplands  of  Western  Africa,  under  the  tropical  sun,  the 
reproductive  power  of  the  prolific  race,  combined  with  the 
imperfect  development  of  its  moral  faculties,  gave  to  hu- 
man life,  in  the  eye  of  man  himself,  an  inferior  value. 
Humanity  did  not  respect  itself  in  any  of  its  forms,  —  in 
the  individual,  in  the  family,  or  in  the  nation.  Our  systems 
of  morals  will  not  explain  the  phenomenon  ;  its  cause  is  not 
to  be  sought  in  the  suppression  of  moral  feeling,  but  rather 
in  the  condition  of  a  branch  of  the  human  family  not  yet 
conscious  of  its  powers,  not  yet  fully  possessed  of  its  moral 
and  rational  life.  In  the  state  of  the  race  itself,  in  Sene- 
gambia,  in  Upper  and  Lower  Guinea,  the  problem  of  the 
slave-trade  finds  its  solution.  The  habits  of  the  native  tribes 
of  America  rendered  its  establishment  with  them  impossible. 
The  quick  maturity  of  life,  the  facility  of  obtaining  suste- 
nance, the  nature  of  the  negro,  an  undeveloped  intelligence, 
and  the  fruitfulness  of  the  race,  explain  why,  from  century 
to  century,  the  slave-ships  could  find  a  freight,  and  yet  the 
population  of  the  interior  be  replenished. 

England  valued  Africa  as  returning  for  her  manufactures 
abundant  laborers  for  her  colonies,  and  valued  it  for  nothing 
else.  Africans  of  more  than  thirty  years  of  age  were  re- 
jected by  the  traders  as  too  old,  and  few  were  received 
under  fourteen.  Of  the  whole  number,  not  more  than  one 
third  part  was  composed  of  women ;  and  a  woman  past 
two-and-twenty  was  hardly  deemed  worth  transportation. 
The  English  slave-ships  were  laden  with  the  youth  of 
Africa. 

Slavery,  and  even  a  change  of  masters,  were  familiar 
to  the  African ;  but  to  be  conducted  to  the  shores  of  the 
Western  Ocean,  to  be  doomed  to  pass  its  boundless  deep 
and  enter  on  new  toils  in  an  untried  clime  and  amidst 
an  unknown  race,  was  appalling  to  the  black  man.  The 
horrors  of  the  passage  corresponded  with  the  infamy  of 
the  trade.  Small  vessels,  of  little  more  than  two  hundred 
tons'  burden,  were  prepared  for  the  trafiic ;  for  these  could 
most  easily  penetrate  the  bays  and  rivers  of  the  coast,  and, 


550  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLIL 

quickly  obtaining  a  lading,  could  soonest  hurry  away  from 
the  deadly  air  of  the  African  coast.  In  such  a  bark,  five  hun- 
dred negroes  and  more  have  been  stowed,  exciting  wonder 
that  men  could  have  lived,  within  the  tropics,  cribbed  in 
so  few  inches  of  room.  The  inequality  of  force  between 
the  crew  and  the  cargo  led  to  the  use  of  manacles ;  the 
hands  of  the  stronger  men  were  made  fast  together,  and 
the  right  leg  of  one  was  chained  to  the  left  of  another. 
The  avarice  of  the  trader  was  a  partial  guarantee  of  the 
security  of  fife,  as  far  as  it  depended  on  him ;  but  death 
hovered  always  over  the  slave-ship.  The  negroes,  as  they 
came  from  the  higher  level  to  the  seaside,  poorly  fed  on 
the  sad  pilgrimage,  sleeping  at  night  on  the  damp  earth 
without  covering,  and  often  reaching  the  coast  at  unfavor- 
able seasons,  imbibed  the  seeds  of  disease,  which  confine- 
ment on  board  ship  quickened  into  feverish  activity.  There 
have  been  examples  where  one  half  of  them  —  it  has  been 
said,  even,  where  two  thirds  of  them  —  perished  on  the 
passage.  The  total  loss  of  life  on  the  voyage  is  computed 
to  have  been,  on  the  average,  fifteen,  certainly  full  twelve 
and  a  half,  in  the  hundred ;  the  harbors  of  the  West  Indies 
proved  fatal  to  four  and  a  half  more  out  of  every  hundred. 
No  scene  of  wretchedness  could  surpass  a  crowded  slave- 
ship  during  a  storm  at  sea,  unless  it  were  that  same  ship 
dismasted,  or  suffering  from  a  protracted  voyage  and  want 
of  food,  its  miserable  inmates  tossed  helplessly  to  and  fro 
under  the  rays  of  a  vertical  sun,  vainly  gasping  for  a  drop 
of  water. 

Of  a  direct  voyage  from  Guinea  to  the  coast  of  the 
United  States  no  journal  is  known  to  exist,  though  slave- 
ships  from  Africa  entered  Newport  and  nearly  every  consid- 
erable harbor  south  of  it. 

In  the  northern  provinces  of  English  America,  the  few 
negroes  were  lost  in  the  larger  number  of  whites ;  and  only 
in  the  lowlands  of  South  Carolina  and  Virginia  did  they 
constitute  a  great  majority  of  the  inhabitants.  But  they 
came  with  the  limited  faculties  of  uncivilized  man ;  when 
they  met  on  our  soil,  they  were  as  strange  to  one  another 
as  to  their  masters.     Taken  from  places  in  Africa  a  thou- 


Chap.  XLII.         MONOPOLY  OF  THE  SLAVE-TRADE.        551 

sand  miles  asunder,  the  negro  emigrants  to  America  brought 
with  them  no  common  language  or  worship,  no  abiding 
usages,  no  nationality.  They  were  compelled  to  adopt  a 
new  dialect  for  intercourse  with  each  other;  and  broken 
English  became  their  tongue  not  less  among  themselves 
than  with  their  masters.  Hence  there  was  no  unity  among 
them,  and  no  immediate  political  danger  from  their  joint 
action.  Once  an  excitement  against  them  raged  in  New 
York,  through  fear  of  a  pretended  plot ;  but  the  frenzy 
grew  out  of  a  delusion.  Sometimes  the  extreme  harshness 
of  taskmasters  may  have  provoked  resistance  ;  or  sometimes 
an  African,  accustomed  from  birth  to  freedom,  and  reduced 
to  slavery  by  the  chances  of  war,  carried  with  him  across 
the  Atlantic  the  indomitable  spirit  of  a  warrior ;  but  the 
instances  of  insurrection  were  insulated,  and  without  result. 
Destitute  of  common  traditions,  customs,  and  laws,  the 
black  population  existed  in  fragments,  having  no  bonds  of 
union  but  color  and  misfortune.  Thus  the  negro  slave  in 
America  was  dependent  on  his  master  for  civilization ;  he 
could  be  initiated  into  skill  in  the  arts  only  through  him  ; 
through  him  only  could  he  gain  a  country;  and,  as  a  con- 
sequence, in  the  next  generation,  if  dissatisfied  with  his 
condition,  he  had  yet  learned  to  love  the  land  of  his  mas- 
ter ;  it  was  his  country  also. 

It  is  not  easy  to  conjecture  how  many  negroes  were  im- 
ported into  the  English  continental  colonies.  The  usual 
estimates  far  exceed  the  truth.  Climate  came  in  aid  of 
opinion  to  oppose  their  introduction.  Owing  to  the  inequal- 
ity of  the  sexes,  their  natural  increase  was  not  rapid  in  the 
first  generation.  Previous  to  the  year  1740,  there  may  have 
been  introduced  into  our  country  nearly  one  hundred  and 
thirty  thousand  ;  before  1776,  a  few  more  than  three  hundred 
thousand.  In  1727,  "  the  vast  importation  of  negroes  "  was 
a  subject  of  complaint  in  South  Carolina.  The  German 
traveller  Von  Reck,  in  1734,  reported  the  number  of  ne- 
groes in  that  province  at  thirty  thousand,  and  for  the 
annual  importation  gave  the  greatly  exaggerated  estimate 
of  nearly  three  thousand. 

In  the  northern  and  the  middle  states,  the  negro  was 


652  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLH. 

employed  for  menial  offices  and  in  the  culture  of  wheat 
and  maize.  In  the  south,  almost  all  the  tobacco  exported 
from  Maryland  and  Virginia,  all  the  indigo  and  rice  of  Car- 
olina, were  the  fruit  of  his  toils.  Instead  of  remaining  in 
a  wild  and  unproductive  servitude,  his  labor  contributed  to 
the  wealth  of  nations ;  his  destiny,  from  its  influence  on 
commerce,  excited  interest  throughout  the  civilized  world. 

With  new  powers  of  production,  the  negro  learned  new 
wants,  which  were  at  least  partially  supplied.  At  the  north, 
he  dwelt  under  the  roof  of  his  master ;  his  physical  well- 
being  was  provided  for,  and  opinion  protected  him  against 
cruelty.  At  the  south,  his  home  was  a  rude  cabin  of  his 
own,  constructed  of  logs  or  slabs  ;  but  for  the  abundance  of 
fuel,  a  feeble  protection  against  winter.  The  early  writers 
tell  us  little  of  his  history,  except  the  crops  which  he  raised. 

His  physical  constitution  decided  his  home  in  the  New 
"World  :  he  loved  the  sun  ;  even  the  climate  of  Virginia  was 
too  chill  for  him.  His  labor,  therefore,  increased  in  value 
as  he  proceeded  south ;  and  hence  the  relation  of  master 
and  slave  came  to  be  essentially  a  southern  institution :  to 
the  southern  colonies,  mainly,  Providence  intrusted  the 
guardianship  and  the  education  of  the  colored  race. 

The  testimony  of  concurrent  tradition  represents  the  ne- 
groes, at  their  arrival,  to  have  been  gross  and  stupid,  having 
memory  and  physical  strength,  but  undisciplined  in  the 
exercise  of  reason  and  imagination.  Their  organization 
seemed  analogous  to  their  barbarism.  But,  at  the  end  of 
a  generation,  all  observers  affirmed  the  marked  progress  of 
the  black  American.  In  the  midst  of  the  horrors  of  slavery 
and  the  slave-trade,  the  masters  had,  in  j)art  at  least,  per- 
formed the  office  of  advancing  and  civilizing  the  negro. 

The  thought  of  emancipation  early  presented  itself.  In 
1701,  Boston  instructed  its  representatives  "to  encourage 
the  bringing  of  white  servants,  and  to  put  a  period  to  ne- 
groes being  slaves."  In  1712,  to  a  petition  for  the  "  en- 
largement" of  negro  slaves  by  law,  the  legislature  of 
Pennsylvania  answered  that  "  it  was  neither  just  nor  con- 
venient to  set  them  at  liberty ; "  and  yet  George  Keith,  the 
early  abolitionist,  was  followed  by  the  eccentric  Benjamin 


1727.  MONOPOLY  OF  THE  SLAVE-TRADE.  553 

Lay ;  by  Ralph  Sandiford,  who  held  slavery  to  be  inconsis- 
tent alike  with  the  rights  of  man  and  the  principles  of 
Christianity ;  and,  at  a  later  day,  by  the  amiable  enthusiast, 
Anthony  Benezet. 

But  did  not  Christianity  enfranchise  its  converts?  The 
Christian  world  of  that  day  almost  universally  revered  in 
Christ  the  impersonation  of  the  divine  wisdom.  Could  an 
intelligent  being,  Avho,  through  the  Mediator,  had  partici- 
pated in  the  Spirit  of  God,  and  by  his  own  inward  experi- 
ence had  become  conscious  of  a  Supreme  Existence,  and  of 
relations  between  that  Existence  and  humanity,  be  right- 
fully held  in  bondage  ?  From  New  England  to  Carolina, 
the  "  notion  "  prevailed  that  "  being  baptized  is  inconsis- 
tent with  a  state  of  slavery  ; "  and  this  early  apprehension 
proved  a  main  obstacle  to  the  culture  and  "  conversion  of 
these  poor  people."  The  sentiment  was  so  deep  and  so  gen- 
eral that  South  Carolina  in  1712,  Maryland  in  1715,  Virginia 
repeatedly  from  1667  to  1748,  set  forth  by  special  enact- 
ments that  baptism  did  not  confer  freedom.  The  lawyers 
declared  the  fear  groundless  ;  and  "  the  opinion  of  his  maj- 
esty's attorney  and  solicitor  general,  Yorke  and  Talbot, 
signed  with  their  own  hands,  was  accordingly  printed  in 
Rhode  Island,  and  dispersed  through  the  plantations."  "  I 
heartily  wish,"  adds  Berkeley,  "  it  may  produce  the  intended 
effect ; "  and  at  the  same  time  he  rebuked  "  the  irrational 
contempt  of  the  blacks,"  which  regarded  them  "as  creat- 
ures of  another  species,  having  no  right  to  be  in- 
structed." In  like  manner,  Gibson,  the  bishop  of  ^^y\g 
London,  asserted  that  "  Christianity  and  the  embrac- 
ing of  the  gospel  does  not  make  the  least  alteration  in 
civil  property ; "  while  he  besought  the  masters  to  regard 
the  negroes  "not  barely  as  slaves,  but  as  men-slaves  and 
women-slaves,  having  the  same  frame  and  faculties  with 
themselves."  In  this  way,  strife  with  the  lawyers  and  the 
planters  was  avoided  by  friends  to  the  negro,  who  were 
anxious  for  his  improvement,  and  willing  to  leave  his  eman- 
cipation to  be  decided  by  the  result. 

There  is  not,  in  all  the  colonial  legislation  of  America, 
one  law  which  recognises  the  rightfulness  of  slavery  in  the 


554  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLII. 

abstract.  Every  province  favored  freedom  as  such.  The 
real  question  at  issue  was,  from  the  first,  not  one  of  slavery 
and  freedom  generally,  but  of  the  relations  to  each  other 
of  the  Ethiopian  and  American  races.  The  Englishman  in 
America  tolerated  and  enforced  not  the  slavery  of  man,  but 
the  slavery  of  the  man  who  was 

"  guilty  of  a  skin 
Not  colored  like  his  own." 
In  the  skin  lay  unexpiated,  and,  as  it  was  held,  inexpiable, 
guilt.  The  negro,  whom  the  benevolence  of  his  master 
enfranchised,  was  not  absorbed  into  the  mass  of  the  free 
population :  his  color  adhered  to  him,  and  still  constituted 
him  a  separate  element  in  society.  Hence  arose  laws  re- 
stricting the  right  of  emancipation.  The  indelible  mark  of 
his  species  remained  unfaded  and  unchanged ;  and,  in  the 
state  of  opinion,  for  him  to  rise  by  single  merit  was  im- 
practicable ;  the  path  to  social  equality  was  not  open  to 
him;  he  could  not  raise  himself  from  humiliation  without 
elevating  his  race. 

Our  country  might  well  have  shrunk  from  assuming  the 
guardianship  of  the  negro.  Hence  the  question  of  tolerating 
the  slave-trade  and  the  question  of  abolishing  slavery  rested 
on  different  grounds.  The  one  related  to  a  refusal  of  a 
trust ;  the  other,  to  the  manner  of  its  exercise.  The  Eng- 
lish continental  colonies,  in  the  aggregate,  were  always 
opposed  to  the  African  slave-trade.  Maryland,  Virginia, 
even  Carolina,  alarmed  at  the  excessive  production  and  the 
consequent  low  price  of  their  staples,  at  the  heavy  debts 
incurred  by  the  purchase  of  slaves  on  credit,  and  at  the 
dangerous  increase  of  the  colored  population,  each  showed 
an  anxious  preference  for  the  introduction  of  white  men; 
and  laws  designed  to  restrict  importations  of  slaves  are 
scattered  copiously  along  the  records  of  colonial 
April's,  legislation.  The  first  continental  congress  which 
took  to  itself  powers  of  legislation  gave  a  legal  ex- 
pression to  the  well-formed  opinion  of  the  country,  by 
resolving  "that  no  slaves  be  imported  into  any  of  the 
thirteen  united  colonies." 

Before  America  legislated  for  herself,  the  interdict  of 


Chap.  XLII.         MONOPOLY  OF  THE  SLAVE-TRADE.  555 

the  slave-trade  was  impossible.  England  was  inexorable  in 
maintaining  the  system,  which  gained  new  and  stronger 
supporters  by  its  excess.  The  English  slave-trade  began 
to  attain  its  great  activity  after  the  assiento  treaty.  From 
1680  to  1700,  the  English  took  from  Africa  about  three 
hundred  thousand  negroes,  or  about  fifteen  thousand  a  year. 
The  number  during  the  continuance  of  the  assiento  may 
have  averaged  annually  not  far  from  thirty  thousand.  Ray- 
nal  considers  the  number  of  negroes  exported  by  all  European 
nations  from  Africa  before  1776  to  have  been  nine  millions ; 
and  historians  of  the  slave-trade  have  deemed  his  statement 
too  small.  A  careful  analysis  of  the  colored  population  in 
America  at  different  periods,  and  the  inferences  to  be  de- 
duced from  the  few  authentic  records  of  the  numbers 
imported,  corrected  'by  a  comparison  with  the  commercial 
products  of  slave  labor,  as  appearing  in  the  annals  of  Eng- 
lish commerce,  seem  to  prove,  beyond  a  doubt,  that  even 
the  estimate  of  Raynal  is  larger  than  the  reality.  "We  shall 
not  err  very  much  if,  for  the  century  previous  to  the  pro- 
hibition of  the  slave-trade  by  the  American  congress  in 
1776,  we  assume  the  number  imported  by  the  English  into 
the  Spanish,  French,  and  English  West  Indies,  as  well  as 
the  English  continental  colonies,  to  have  been  collectively 
nearly  three  millions :  to  which  are  to  be  added  more  than 
a  quarter  of  a  million  purchased  in  Africa,  and  thrown  into 
the  Atlantic  on  the  passage.  The  gross  returns  to  English 
merchants,  for  the  whole  traffic  in  that  number  of  slaves, 
may  have  been  not  far  from  four  hundred  millions  of  dol- 
lars. Yet,  as  at  least  one  half  of  the  negroes  exported  from 
Africa  to  America  were  carried  in  English  ships,  it  should 
be  observed  that  this  estimate  is  by  far  the  lowest  ever 
made  by  any  inquirer  into  the  statistics  of  human  wicked- 
ness. After  every  deduction,  the  trade  retains  its  gigantic 
character  of  crime. 

In  an  age  when  the  interests  of  trade  guided  legislation, 
this  branch  of  commerce  possessed  paramount  attractions. 
Not  a  statesman  exposed  its  enormities;  and,  if  Richard 
Baxter  reminded  the  slaveholder  that  the  slave  "  was  of  as 
good  a  kind  as  himself,  born  to  as  much  liberty,  by  nature 


666  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLII. 

his  equal,  a  servant  and  a  brother,  by  right  born  his  own  ; " 
if  Addison,  as  a  man  of  letters,  held  it  without  excuse,  that 
*'  this  part  of  our  species  was  not  put  upon  the  common 
foot  of  humanity;"  if  Southern  drew  tears  by  the  tragic 
tale  of  "  Oronooko ; "  if  Steele  awakened  a  throb  of  indigna- 
tion by  the  story  of  "Inkle  and  Yarico;"  if  Savage  and 
Shenstone  pointed  their  feeble  couplets  with  the  wrongs  of 
*' Afric's  sable  children ;  "  if  the  Irish  metaphysician  Hutch- 
eson,  who  proposed  to  rulers  for  their  object  "  the  greatest 
happiness  of  the  greatest  number,"  justly  stigmatized  the 
traffic,  —  yet  no  public  opinion  lifted  its  voice  against  it. 
English  ships,  fitted  out  in  English  cities,  under  the  special 
favor  of  the  royal  family,  of  the  ministry,  and  of  parliament, 
stole  from  Africa,  in  the  years  from  1700  to  1750,  probably  a 
million  and  a  half  of  souls,  of  whom  one  eighth  were  buried  in 
the  Atlantic,  victims  of  the  passage ;  and  yet  in  England  no 
general  indignation  rebuked  the  enormity,  for  the  public 
opinion  of  the  age  was  obedient  to  materialism.  Wars  had 
been  for  the  balance  of  power,  as  though  the  safeguards  of 
nations  lay  in  force  alone.  Protestantism  itself  had,  in  the 
political  point  of  view,  been  the  triumph  of  materialism  over 
the  spiritual  authority  of  the  church.  The  same  influence 
exhibited  itself  in  philosophy  and  letters.  Shaftesbury, 
who  professed  to  be  its  antagonist,  degrading  conscience  to 
the  sphere  of  sensibility,  enlarged  rather  than  subverted  the 
philosophy  of  the  senses.  The  poetical  essayist'  on  man, 
in  exquisite  diction,  exalted  self-love  into  an  identity  with 
social,  and  celebrated  its  praise  as  the  source  of  the  most 
capacious  philanthropy.  Bolingbroke,  in  his  attacks  on  re- 
ligion, was  but  a  caviller  at  historical  difficulties.  Of  the 
large  school  of  English  deists,  some  were  only  disposed  to 
make  war  upon  human  authority ;  while  others,  in  their 
theories  of  necessity,  so  lost  sight  of  the  creative  power  of 
mind  as  to  make  of  the  universe  but  one  vast  series  of 
results  consequent  on  material  forces.  The  philosophy  of 
that  day  furnished  to  the  African  no  protection  against 
oppression ;  and  the  interpretation  of  English  common  law 
was  equally  regardless  of  human  freedom.  The  colonial 
negro,  who  sailed  to  the  metropolis,  found  no  benefit  from 


1750.  MONOPOLY  OF  THE  SLAVE-TRADE.  557 

touching  the  soil  of  England,  but  returned  a  slave.  Such 
was  the  approved  law  of  Virginia  in  the  first  half  of  the 
last  century;  such  was  the  opinion  of  Yorke  and  Talbot, 
the  law  officers  of  the  crown,  as  expressed  in  1729,  and, 
after  a  lapse  of  twenty  years,  repeated  and  confirmed  by 
Yorke  as  chancellor  of  England. 

The  influence  of  the  manufacturers  was  still  worse.  They 
clamored,  for  the  protection  of  a  trade  which  opened  to 
them  an  African  market.  Thus  the  party  of  the  slave-trade 
dictated  laws  to  England.  A  resolve  of  the  commons,  in 
the  days  of  William  and  Mary,  proposed  to  lay  open  the 
trade  in  negroes  "  for  the  better  supply  of  the  planta- 
tions ; "  and  the  statute-book  of  England  soon  de-  i695. 
clared  the  opinion  of  its  king  and  its  parliament,  that 
"the  trade  is  highly  beneficial  and  advantageous  to  the 
kingdom  and  the  colonies."  In  1708,  a  committee  of  the 
house  of  commons  report  that  "  the  trade  is  important,  and. 
ought  to  be  free  ;"  in  1711,  a  committee  once  more  report 
that  "the  plantations  ought  to  be  supplied  with  negroes 
at  reasonable  rates,"  and  urge  an  increase  of  importations. 
In  June,  1712,  Queen  Anne,  in  her  speech  to  parliament, 
boasts  of  her  success  in  securing  to  Englishmen  a  new  mar- 
ket for  slaves  in  Spanish  America.  In  1729,  George  II. 
recommended  a  provision,  at  the  national  expense,  for  the 
African  forts  ;  and  the  recommendation  was  followed.  At 
last,  in  1749,  to  give  the  highest  activity  to  the  traffic,  every 
obstruction  to  private  enterprise  was  removed,  and  the 
ports  of  Africa  were  laid  open  to  English  competition ; 
for  "  the  slave-trade,"  such  are  the  words  of  the  statute, 
"  is  very  advantageous  to  Great  Britain."  "  The  British 
senate,"  wrote  one  of  its  members,  in  February, 
1750,  "  have  this  fortnight  been  pondering  meth-  Fe];'^^25. 
ods  to  make  more  effectual  that  horrid  traffic  of 
selling  negroes.  It  has  appeared  to  us  that  six-and-forty 
thousand  of  these  wretches  are  sold  CA^ery  year  to  our  plan- 
tations alone." 

But,  while  the  partial  monopoly  of  the  African  company 
was  broken  down,  and  the  commerce  in  men  was  opened  to 
the  competition  of  all  Englishmen,  the  monopoly  of  British 


658  COLONIAL  HISTOKY.  Chap.  XLIL 

subjects  was  rigidly  enforced  against  foreigners.  That 
Englishmen  alone  might  monopolize  all  wealth  to  be  de- 
rived from  the  trade,  Holt  and  Pollexfen,  and  eight  other 
judges,  in  pursuance  of  an  order  in  council,  had  given  their 
opinion  "  that  negroes  are  merchandise,"  and  that  therefore 
the  act  of  navigation  was  to  be  extended  to  English  slave- 
fthips  to  the  exclusion  of  aliens. 

The  same  policy  was  manifested  in  the  relations  between 
the  English  crown  and  the  colonies.  Land  from  the  public 
domain  was  given  to  emigrants,  in  one  West  India  colony 
at  least,  on  condition  that  the  resident  owner  would  "  keep 
four  negroes  for  every  hundred  acres."  The  eigh- 
1702.  teenth  century  was  ushered  in  by  the  royal  instruc- 
tion of  Queen  Anne  to  the  governor  of  New  York 
and  New  Jersey,  "  to  give  due  encouragement  to  mer- 
chants, and  in  particular  to  the  royal  African  company 
of  England."  That  the  instruction  was  general  is  evi- 
dent from  the  apology  of  Spotswood  for  the  small  number 
of  slaves  brought  into  Virginia.  In  that  commonwealth,  the 
planters  beheld  with  dismay  the  increase  of  negroes. 
M^ay^i2.  -^  *^^  repressed  their  importation ;  and,  in  1726,  Hugh 
Drysdale,  the  deputy  governor,  announced  to  the 
house  that  "  the  interfering  interest  of  the  African  company 
had  obtained  the  repeal  of  that  law."  Long  afterwards,  a 
statesman  of  Virginia,  in  full  view  of  the  course  -of  colonial 
legislation  and  English  counteracting  authority,-  unbiassed 
by  hostility  to  England,  bore  true  testimony  that  "  the 
British  government  constantly  checked  the  attempts  of 
Virginia  to  put  a  stop  to  this  infernal  traffic."  On  what- 
ever ground  Virginia  opposed  the  trade,  the  censure  was 
just. 

The  white  man,  emigrating,  became  a  dangerous  freeman  : 
it  was  quite  sure  that  the  negroes  of  that  century  would 
never  profess  republicanism ;  their  presence  in  the  colonies 
increased  dependence.  This  reasoning  was  avowed 
1745.  by  "  a  British  merchant,"  in  1745,  in  a  political  tract 
entitled  "  The  African  Slave  Trade  the  Great  Pillar 
and  Support  of  the  British  Plantation  Trade  in  America." 
"  Were  it  possible   for  white   men   to   answer  the  end  of 


Chap.  XLII.         MONOPOLY  OF  THE  SLAVE-TRADE.  559 

negroes  in  planting,"  it  is  there  contended,  "  our  colonies 
would  interfere  with  the  manufactures  of  these  kingdoms. 
In  such  case,  indeed,  we  might  have  just  reason  to  dread 
the  prosperity  of  our  colonies;  but,  while  we  can  Supply 
them  abundantly  with  negroes,  we  need  be  under  no  such 
apprehensions."  "  Negro  labor  will  keep  our  British  colo- 
nies in  a  due  subserviency  to  the  interest  of  their  mother 
country  ;  for,  while  our  plantations  depend  only  on  planting 
by  negroes,  our  colonies  can  never  prove  injurious  to  Brit- 
ish manufactures,  never  become  independent  of  their  king- 
dom." This  policy  of  England  knew  no  relenting.  "  My 
friends  and  I,"  wrote  Oglethorpe,  "settled  the  colony  of 
Georgia,  and  by  charter  were  established  trustees.  We 
determined  not  to  suffer  slavery  there;  but  the  slave  mer- 
chants and  their  adherents  not  only  occasioned  us  much 
trouble,  but  at  last  got  the  government  to  sanction  them." 
South  Carolina  in  1760,  from  prudential  motives,  attempted 
restrictions,  and  gained  only  a  rebuke  from  the  English 
ministry.  Great  Britain,  steadily  rejecting  every  colonial 
limitation  of  the  slave-trade,  instructed  the  governors,  on 
pain  of  removal,  not  to  give  even  a  temporary  assent  to 
such  laws ;  and,  but  a  year  before  the  prohibition  of  the 
slave-trade  by  the  American  congress  in  1776,  the  Earl  of 
Dartmouth  addressed  to  a  colonial  agent  these  memorable 
words:  "We  cannot  allow  the  colonies  to  check,  or  dis- 
courage in  any  degree,  a  traffic  so  beneficial  to  the  nation." 
The  assiento  treaty,  originally  extorted  from  Spain  by 
force  of  arms,  remained  a  source  of  jealousy  between  that 
kingdom  and  England.  Other  collisions  were  preparing  on 
the  American  frontier,  where  Spain  claimed  to  extend  her 
jurisdiction  north  of  the  Savannah  River,  as  far  at  least  as 
St.  Helena  Sound.  The  foundation  of  St.  Augustine  had 
preceded  that  of  Charleston  by  a  century ;  national  pride 
still  clung  to  the  traditions  of  the  wide  extent  of  Florida ; 
the  settlement  of  the  Scottish  emigrants  at  Port  Royal  had 
been  dispersed ;  Indians  and  negroes  were  received  as 
ready  allies  against  English  encroachments ;  and  it  was  fee- 
bleness alone  which  had  tolerated  the  advancement  of  the 
plantations  of  South  Carolina  towards  the  Savannah.   Mean- 


560  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLH. 

time,  England  resolved  to  pass  that  stream,  and  carry  her 
flag  still  nearer  the  walls  of  St.  Augustine. 

The  resolution  was  not  hastily  adopted.  In  1717,  a  pro- 
posal was  brought  forward,  by  one  whose  father  had  been 
interested  in  the  unfortunate  enterprise  of  Lord  Cardross, 
to  plant  a  new  colony  south  of  Carolina,  in  the  region  that 
was  heralded  as  the  most  delightful  country  of  the  universe. 
The  land  was  to  be  tilled  by  British  and  Irish  laborers  ex- 
clusively, without  "the  dangerous  help  of  blackamoors." 
Three  years  afterwards,  in  the  excited  season  of  English 
stock-jobbing  and  English  anticipations,  the  suggestion  was 

revived.  When  Carolina  became  by  purchase  a 
1728.       royal  province,  Johnson,  its  governor,  was  directed 

to  mark  out  townships  as  far  south  as  the  Alata- 
maha ;  and,  in  1731,  a  site  was  chosen  for  a  colony  of  Swiss 
in  the  ancient  land  of  the  Yamassees,  but  on  the  left  bank 
of  the  Savannah.  The  country  between  the  two  rivers  was 
still  a  wilderness,  over  which  England  held  only  a  nominal 
jurisdiction,  when  the  spirit  of  benevolence  formed  a  part- 
nership with  the  selfish  passion  for  extended  territory,  and, 
heedless  of  the  objection  that  "the  colonies  would  grow  too 
great "  for  England  "  and  throw  off  their  dependency," 
resolved  to  plant  the  sunny  clime  with  the  children  of  mis- 
fortune, with  those  who  in  England  had  neither  land  nor 
shelter,  and  those  on  the  continent  to  whom,  as  Protestants, 
bigotry  denied  freedom  of  worship  and  a  home. 

In  the  days  when  protection  of  property  was  avowed  to 
be  the  end  of  government,  the  gallows  was  set  up  as  the 
penalty  for  a  petty  theft.  Each  year,  in  Great  Britain, 
at  least  four  thousand  unhappy  men  were  immured  in  prison 
for  the  misfortune  of  poverty ;  a  small  debt  exposed  to  a 
perpetuity  of  imprisonment ;  one  indiscreet  contract  doomed 
the  miserable  dupe  to  lifelong  confinement.  The  subject 
won  the  attention  of  James  Oglethorpe,  a  member  of  the 
British  parliament;  in  middle  life;  educated  at  Oxford;  an 
hereditary  loyalist ;  receiving  his  first  commission  in  the 
English  army  during  the  ascendency  of  Bolingbroke  ;  a  vol- 
unteer in  the  family  of  Prince  Eugene*,  present  at  the  siege 
of  Belgrade.     To  him,  in  the  annals  of  legislative  philan- 


1732.  COLONIZATION  OF  GEOKGIA.  561 

thropy,  the  honor  is  due  of  having  first  resolved  to  lighten 
the  lot  of  debtors.  Touched  with  the  sorrows  which  the 
walls  of  a  prison  could  not  hide  from  him,  he  searched  into 
the  gloomy  horrors  of  jails, 

Where  sickness  pines,  where  thirst  and  hunger  burn, 
And  poor  misfortune  feels  the  lash  of  vice. 
In  1728,  he  invoked  the  interference  of  the  English  parlia- 
ment ;  and,  as  a  commissioner  for  inquiring  into  the  state 
of  the  jails  in  the  kingdom,  persevered,  till,  "  from  extreme 
misery,  he  restored  to  light  and  freedom  multitudes  who, 
by  long  confinement  for  debt,  were  strangers  and  helpless 
in  the  country  of  their  birth."  He  did  more.  For  them, 
and  for  persecuted  Protestants,  he  planned  a  new  destiny  in 
America,  where  former  poverty  would  be  no  reproach,  and 
where  the  simplicity  of  piety  could  indulge  the  spirit  of 
devotion  without  fear  of  persecution  from  men  who  hated 
the  rebuke  of  its  example. 

To  further  this  end,  a  charter  from  George  II., 
dated  the  ninth  day  of  June,  1732,  erected  the  coun-  ju^^g  g. 
try  between  the  Savannah  and  the  Alatamaha,  and 
from  the  head-springs  of  those  rivers  due  west  to  the  Pacific, 
into  the  province  of  Georgia,  and  placed  it  for  twenty-one 
years  under  the  guardianship  of  a  corporation,  "  in  trust  for 
the  poor."  The  common  seal  of  the  corporation,  having 
on  one  side  a  group  of  silk-worms  at  their  toils,  with  the 
motto,  "  Non  sibi,  sed  aliis,"  —  "  Not  for  themselves,  but  for 
others,"  —  expressed  the  purpose  of  the  patrons,  who  by  their 
own  request  were  restrained  from  receiving  any  grant  of 
lands,  or  any  emolument  whatever.  On  the  other  side  of 
the  seal,  the  device  represented  two  figures  reposing  on 
uras,  emblematic  of  the  boundary  rivers,  having  between 
them  the  genius  of  "  Georgia  Augusta,"  with  a  cap  of  liberty 
on  her  head,  a  spear  in  one  hand,  the  horn  of  plenty  in  the 
other.  But  the  cap  of  liberty  was,  for  a  time  at  least,  a  false 
emblem;  for  all  executive  and  legislative  power,  and  the 
institution  of  courts,  were  for  twenty-one  years  given  exclu- 
sively to  the  trustees,  or  their  common  council,  who  were 
appointed  during  good  behavior.  The  trustees  held  these 
grants  to  contain  but  "proper  powers  for  establishing 
VOL.  II.  86 


562  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLIL 

and  governing  the  colony."  The  land,  open  to  Jews,  was 
closed  against  "  papists."  At  the  head  of  the  council  stood 
Shaftesbury,  fourth  earl  of  that  name ;  but  its  most  cele- 
brated member  was  Oglethorpe.  So  illustrious  were  the 
auspices  of  the  design,  that  hope  painted  visions  of  an  Eden 
that  was  to  spring  up  to  reward  such  disinterested  benevo- 
lence. The  kindly  sun  of  the  new  colony  was  to  look  down 
on  purple  vintages,  and  the  silk- worm  yield  its  thread  to 
British  looms.  The  charities  of  an  opulent  and  an  enlight- 
ened nation  were  to  be  concentrated  on  the  enterprise ; 
individual  zeal  was  kindled  in  its  favor;  the  Society  for 
Propagating  the  Gospel  in  foreign  parts  sought  to  promote 
its  interests;  and  parliament  showed  its  good-will  by  con- 
tributing ten  thousand  pounds. 

But,  while  others  gave  to  the  design  their  leisure,  their 
1732.  prayers,  or  their  wealth,  Oglethorpe  devoted  himself 
Noj-  to  its  fulfilment.  In  November,  1732,  he  embarked 
1733  ^^^^^  about  one  hundred  and  twenty  emigrants  for 
Jan.  13.  America,  and  in  fifty-seven  days  arrived  off  the  bar 
13-24  ^^  Charleston.  Accepting  a  short  welcome,  he  sailed 
Jan.  directly  for  Port  Royal.  While  the  colony  was  land- 
20-31.  ing  at  Beaufort,  its  patron  ascended  the  boundary 
river  of  Georgia,  and  chose  for  the  site  of  his  chief  town  the 
high  bluff  on  which  Savannah  now  stands.  At  the  distance 
of  a  half  mile  dwelt  the  Yamacraws,  a  branch  of  the  Muskoh- 
gees,  who,  with  Tomo-chichi,  their  chieftain,  sought  security 
by  an  alliance  with  the  English.  "  Here  is  a  little  present," 
said  the  red  man,  as  he  oft'ered  a  buffalo  skin,  painted  on 
the  inside  with  the  head  and  feathers  of  an  eagle.  "  The 
feathers  of  the  eagle  are  soft,  and  signify  love ;  the  buffalo 
skin  is  warm,  and  is  the  emblem  of  protection.  Therefore 
love  and  protect  our  little  families."  On  the  first  day  of 
February,  or,  according  to  the  new  style  of  computation, 
on  the  twelfth,  the  colonists,  on  board  of  a  small  sloop  and 
periaguas,  arrived  at  the  place  intended  for  the  town,  and 
before  evening  encamped  on  shore  near  the  edge  of  the 
river.  Four  beautiful  pines  protected  the  tent  of  Ogle- 
thorpe, who  for  near  a  twelvemonth  sought  no  other  shelter. 
The  streets  of  Savannah  were  laid  out  with  the  greatest 


1783.  COLONIZATION  OF  GEORGIA.  563 

regularity ;  in  each  quarter,  a  public  square  was  reserved ; 
the  houses  were  planned  and  constructed  on  one  model, 
each  a  frame  of  sawed  timber,  twenty-four  feet  by  sixteen, 
floored  with  rough  deals,  the  sides  with  feather-edged  boards 
unplaned,  and  the  roof  shingled.  Such  a  house  Oglethorpe 
afterwards  hired  as  his  residence,  when  in  Savannah.  Ere 
long  a  walk,  cut  through  the  native  woods,  led  to  the  large 
garden  on  the  river-side,  destined  as  a  nursery  of  Euro- 
pean fruit  and  of  the  products  of  America.  The  humane 
reformer  of  prison  discipline  was  the  father  of  the  com- 
monwealth of  Georgia,  "the  place  of  refuge  for  the  dis- 
tressed people  of  Britain  and  the  persecuted  Protestants  of 
Europe." 

In  May,  the  chief  men  of  the  eight  towns  of  the  1733. 
lower  Muskohgees,  accepting  his  invitation,  came  ^^^y^a. 
down  to  make  an  alliance.  Long  King,  the  tall  and  aged 
civil  chief  of  the  Oconas,  spoke  for  them  all :  "  The  Great 
Spirit,  who  dwells  everywhere  around,  and  gives  breath  to 
all  men,  sends  the  English  to  instruct  us."  Claiming  the 
country  south  of  the  Savannah,  he  bade  the  strangers  wel- 
come to  the  lands  which  his  nation  did  not  use;  and,  in 
token  of  sincerity,  he  laid  eight  bundles  of  buckskins  at 
Oglethorpe's  feet.  "  Tomo-chichi,"  he  added,  "  though  ban- 
ished from  his  nation,  has  yet  been  a  great  warrior ;  and,  for 
his  wisdom  and  courage,  the  exiles  chose  him  their  king." 
Tomo-chichi  entered  timorously,  and,  bowing  very  low,  gave 
thanks  that  he  was  still  permitted  "  to  look  for  good  land 
among  the  tombs  of  his  ancestors."  The  chief  of  Coweta 
stood  up  and  said :  "  We  are  come  twenty-five  days'  jour- 
ney to  see  you.  I  was  never  willing  to  go  down  to  Charles- 
ton, lest  I  should  die  on  the  way  ;  but  when  I  heard  you 
were  come,  and  that  you  are  good  men,  I  came  down,  that  I 
might  hear  good  things."  He  then  gave  leave  to  the  exiles 
to  summon  the  kindred  that  loved  them  out  of  each  of  the 
Creek  towns,  that  they  might  dwell  together.  "  Recall,"  he 
added,  "the  Yamassees,  that  they  may  see  the  graves  of 
their  ancestors  before  they  die,  and  may  be  buried  in  peace 
among  them."  On  the  first  of  June,  a  treaty  of  peace  was 
signed,  by  which  the  English  claimed  sovereignty  over  the 


664  COLONIAL  mSTORY.  Chap.  XLIL 

land  of  the  Creeks  as  far  south  as  the  St.  John's ;  and  the 
chieftains  departed  laden  with  presents. 

A  Cherokee  appeared  among  the  English.  "Fear  noth- 
ing," said  Oglethorpe,  "  but  speak  freely  ;  "  and  the  moun- 
taineer answered  :  "  I  always  speak  freely.  Why  should  I 
fear?  I  am  now  among  friends ;  I  never  feared  even  among 
my  enemies."  And  friendly  relations  were  cherished 
July.  with  the  Cherokees.  In  the  following  year,  Red 
Shoes,  a  Choctaw  chief,  proposed  commerce.  "  We 
came  a  great  way,"  said  he,  "  and  we  are  a  great  nation. 
The  French  are  building  forts  about  us,  against  our  liking. 
We  have  long  traded  with  them,  but  they  are  poor  in 
goods  ;  we  desire  that  a  trade  may  be  opened  between  us 
and  you."  And,  when  commerce  with  them  was  begun,  the 
English  coveted  the  harbors  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  The 
good  faith  of  Oglethorpe  in  the  offers  of  peace,  his  noble 
mien  and  sweetness  of  temper,  conciliated  the  confidence  of 
the  red  men ;  in  his  turn,  he  was  pleased  with  their  sim- 
plicity, and  sought  for  means  to  clear  the  glimmering  ray 
of  their  minds,  to  guide  their  bewildered  reason,  and  teach 
them  to  know  the  God  whom  they  ignorantly  adored. 

The  neighboring  province  of  South  Carolina  displayed  "  a 
universal  zeal  for  assisting  its  new  ally  and  bulwark  "  on  the 
south. 

When  the  Roman  Catholic  archbishop,  who  was  the  ruler 
of  Salzburg,  with  merciless  bigotry  drove  out  of  his  domin- 
ions the  Lutherans  whom  horrid  tortures  and  relentless  per- 
secution could  not  force  to  renounce  their  Protestant  faith, 
Frederic  William  I.  of  Prussia  planted  a  part  of  them  on 
freeholds  in  his  kingdom ;  others,  on  the  invitation  of  the 
Society  in  England  for  Propagating  the  Gospel,  prepared  to 
emigrate  to  the  Savannah.  A  free  passage  ;  provisions  in 
Georgia  for  a  whole  season ;  land  for  themselves  and  their 
children,  free  for  ten  years,  then  to  be  held  for  a  small  quit- 
rent  ;  the  privileges  of  native  Englishmen  ;  freedom  of  wor- 
ship,—  these  were  the  promises  made,  accepted,  and 
oSi.  honorably  fulfilled.  On  the  last  day  of  October, 
1733,  "  the  evangelical  community,"  well  supplied 
with  Bibles  and  hjTun-books,  catechisms  and  books  of  devo- 


1734.  COLONIZATION  OF  GEORGIA.  565 

tion ;  conveying  in  one  wagon  their  few  chattels,  in  two 
other  covered  ones  their  feebler  companions,  and  especially 
their  little  ones,  —  after  a  discourse  and  prayer  and  bene- 
dictions, cheerfully,  and  in  the  name  of  God,  began  their 
pilgrimage.  History  need  •not  stop  to  tell  what  charities 
cheered  them  on  their  journey,  what  towns  were  closed 
against  them  by  Roman  Catholic  magistrates,  or  how  they 
entered  Frankfort  on  the  Main,  two  by  two  in  solemn 
procession,  singing  spiritual  songs.  As  they  floated  down 
the  Main,  and  between  the  castled  crags,  the  vineyards, 
and  the  white-walled  towns  that  adorn  the  banks  of  the 
Rhine,  their  conversation,  amidst  hymns  and  prayers,  was 
of  justification,  and  of  sanctification,  and  of  standing 
fast  in  the  Lord,  At  Rotterdam,  they  were  joined  nov^27. 
by  two  preachers,  Bolzius  and  Gronau,  both  disci-  . 
plined  in  charity  at  the  Orphan  House  in  Halle.  A 
passage  of  six  days  carried  them  from  Rotterdam  to  ^J^  'f' 
Dover,  where  several  of  the  trustees  visited  them  and 
provided  considerately  for  their  wants.  In  January,  1734, 
they  set  sail  for  their  new  homes.  The  majesty  of  the  ocean 
quickened  their  sense  of  God's  omnipotence  and  wisdom ; 
and,  as  they  lost  sight  of  land,  they  broke  out  into  a  hymn 
to  his  glory.  The  setting  sun,  after  a  calm,  so  kindled  the 
sea  and  the  sky  that  words  could  not  express  their  rapture, 
and  they  cried  out :  "  How  lovely  the  creation  !  How  infi- 
nitely lovely  the  Creator  !  "  When  the  wind  was  adverse, 
they  prayed  ;  and,  as  it  changed,  one  opened  his  mind  to 
the  other  on  the  power  of  prayer,  even  the  prayer  "  of  a 
man  subject  to  like  passions  as  we  are."  As  the  voyage 
excited  weariness,  a  devout  listener  confessed  himself  to  be 
an  unconverted  man  ;  and  they  reminded  him  of  the  prom- 
ise to  him  that  is  poor  and  of  a  contrite  spirit,  and  trembleth 
at  the  word.  As  they  sailed  pleasantly  with  a  favoring 
breeze,  at  the  hour  of  evening  prayer  they  made  a  covenant 
with  each  other,  like  Jacob  of  old,  and  resolved  by  the 
grace  of  Christ  to  cast  all  the  strange  gods  which  were  in 
their  hearts  into  the  depths  of  the  sea.  A  storm 
grew  so  high  that  not  a  sail  could  be  set ;  and  they  -pe^is, 
raised  their   voices   in  prayer  and  song  amidst  the 


566  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLIL 

tempest,  for  to  love  the   Lord   Jesus   as  a  brother 
Ma?*i8.  gave  consolation.     At   Charleston,   Oglethorpe  bade 
them  welcome;  and,  in  five  days  more,  the  wayfar- 
ing men,  whose  home  was  beyond  the  skies,  pitched  their 
tents  near  Savannah. 

It  remained  to  select  for  them  a  residence.  To  cheer 
their  principal  men  as  they  toiled  through  the  forest  and 
across  brooks,  Oglethorpe,  having  provided  horses,  joined 
the  party.  By  the  aid  of  blazed  trees  and  Indian  guides, 
he  made  his  way  through  morasses ;  a  fallen  tree  served  as 
a  bridge  over  a  stream,  which  the  horses  swam,  for  want  of 
a  ford ;  at  night,  he  encamped  with  them  abroad  round  a 
fire,  and  shared  every  fatigue,  till  the  spot  for  their  village 
was  chosen,  and,  like  the  rivulet  which  formed  its  border, 
was  named  Ebenezer.  There  they  built  their  dwellings, 
and  there  they  resolved  to  raise  a  column  of  stone  in  token 
of  gratitude  to  God,  whose  providence  had  brought  them 
safely  to  the  ends  of  the  earth. 

In  the  same  year,  the  town  of  Augusta  was  laid  out, 
soon  to  become  the  favorite  resort  of  Indian  traders. 
The  good  success  of  Oglethorpe  made  the  colony  increase 
rapidly  by  volunteer  emigrants.  "  His  undertaking  will 
succeed,"  said  Johnson,  the  governor  of  South  Carolina; 
"  for  he  nobly  devotes  all  his  powers  to  serve  the  poor,  and 
rescue  them  from  their  wretchedness."  "  He  bears  a  great 
love  to  the  servants  and  children  of  God,"  wrote  the  pastor 
of  Ebenezer.  "  He  has  taken  care  of  us  to  the  utmost  of  his 
ability."  "  God  has  so  blessed  his  presence  and  his  regula- 
tions in  the  land,  that  others  would  not  in  many  years  have 
accomplished  what  he  has  brought  about  in  one." 

At  length,  in  April,  1734,  after  a  residence  in  America  of 
about  fifteen  months,  Oglethorpe  sailed  for  England,  taking 
with  him  Tomo-chichi  and  others  of  the  Creeks  to  do  hom- 
age at  court,  and  to  invigorate  the  confidence  of  England 
in  the  destiny  of  the  new  colony,  which  was  shown  to  pos- 
sess the  friendship  of  the  surrounding  Indian  nations. 

His  absence  left  Georgia  to  its  own  development.  For 
its  franchises,  it  had  only  the  system  of  juries;  and,  though 
it  could  not  prosper  but  by  self-reliance,  legislation  by  its 
own  representatives  was  not  begun. 


1735.  COLONIZATION  OF  GEORGIA.  567 

The  laws,  too,  which  the  trustees  had  instituted,  were 
irksome.  To  prevent  the  monopoly  of  lands,  to  insure  an 
estate  even  to  the  sons  of  the  unthrifty,  to  strengthen  a 
frontier  colony,  the  trustees,  deceived  by  reasonings  from 
the  system  of  feudal  law  and  by  their  own  prejudices  as 
members  of  the  landed  aristocracy  of  England,  had  granted 
lands  only  in  tail  male.  Here  was  a  grievance  that  soon 
occasioned  a  just  discontent. 

Another  regulation,  which  prohibited  the  sale  of  rum,  led 
only  to  clandestine  traffic. 

A  third  rule  forbade  the  introduction  of  slaves.  "No 
settlement  was  ever  before  established  on  so  humane  a 
plan."  Such  was  the  praise  of  Georgia  uttered  in 
London  in  1734.  "  Slavery,  the  misfortune,  if  not  Feb^e. 
the  dishonor,  of  other  plantations,  is  absolutely  pro- 
scribed. Let  avarice  defend  it  as  it  will,  there  is  an  honest 
reluctance  in  humanity, against  buying  and  selling,  and  re- 
garding those  of  our  own  species  as  our  wealth  and  posses- 
sions." "  The  name  of  slavery  is  here  unheard,  and  every 
inhabitant  is  free  from  un chosen  masters  and  oppression." 
And  the  testimony  of  Oglethorpe,  who  yet  had  once  been 
willing  to  employ  negroes,  and  once,  at  least,  ordered  the 
sale  of  a  slave,  explains  the  motive  of  the  prohibition, 
"  Slavery,"  he  relates,  "  is  against  the  gospel,  as  well  as  the 
fundamental  law  of  England.  We  refused,  as  trustees,  to 
make  a  law  permitting  such  a  horrid  crime."  "  The  pur- 
chase of  negroes  is  forbidden,"  wrote  Yon  Reck,  "on 
account  of  the  vicinity  of  the  Spaniards;"  and  this  was 
doubtless  "the  governmental  view."  The  colony  was  also 
"an  asylum  to  receive  the  distressed.  It  was  necessary, 
therefore,  not  to  permit  slaves  in  such  a  country ;  for  slaves 
starve  the  poor  laborer."  But,  after  a  little  more  than  two 
years,  several  of  the  so  called  "better  sort  of  people  in 
Savannah  "  addressed  a  petition  to  the  trustees  "  for  the 
use  of  negroes." 

During  his  stay  in  England,  Oglethorpe  won  uni-  1734. 
versal  favor  for  his  colony,  the  youngest  child  of  the  ^^^* 
colonial  enterprise  of  England.  Parliament  continued  its 
benefactions;   the   king   expressed   interest  in   a  province 


568  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLIL 

which  bore  his  name.  While  the  jealousy  of  the  maritime 
powers  on  the  continent  was  excited,  new  emigrants  were 
sent  from  England.  In  May,  1735,  the  first  colony  of  Mora- 
vians, nine  in  number,  was  led  to  Savannah  by  the  devoted 
evangelist,  Spangenberg.  A  company  of  Gaelic  Highland- 
ers established  New  Inverness, 

Where  wild  Altama  murmured  to  their  woe. 
1736.  Within  a  few  weeks,  three  hundred  persons,  con- 
Feb.  6.  (jucted  by  Oglethorpe  himself,  landed  not  far  from 
Tybee  Island,  "where  they  all  knelt  and  returned  thanks 
to  God  for  having  safely  arrived  in  Georgia."  Among 
that  group  was  a  re-enforcement  of  Moravians,  —  men 
who  had  a  faith  above  fear;  "whose  wives  and  children 
even  were  not  afraid  to  die;"  whose  simplicity  and  so- 
lemnity in  their  conferences  and  prayers  seemed  to  revive 
the  primitive  "  assemblies,  where  form  and  state  were  not, 
but  Paul  the  tent-maker,  or  Peter  the  fisherman,  presided 
with  the  demonstration  of  the  Spirit."  There,  too,  were 
John  and  Charles  Wesley,  —  the  latter  selected  as  the  sec- 
retary to  Oglethorpe,  the  former  eager  to  become  an  apostle 
to  the  Indians,  —  fervent  enthusiasts,  who  by  their  own 
confession  were  not  yet  disciplined  to  a  peaceful  possession 
of  their  souls.  "  That  they  were  simple  of  heart,  but  yet 
that  their  ideas  were  disturbed,"  was  the  judgment  of  Zin- 
zendorf.  "  Our  end  in  leaving  our  native  country,"  said 
they,  "is  not  to  gain  riches  and  honor,  but  singly  this,  —  to 
live  wholly  to  the  glory  of  God."  They  desired  to  make 
Georgia  a  religious  colony,  having  no  theory  but  devotion, 
no  ambition  but  to  quicken  the  sentiment  of  piety.  The 
reformation  of  Luther  and  Calvin  had  included  a  political 
revolution ;  its  advocates  went  abroad  on  the  whirlwind, 
and  overthrew  institutions  which  time  had  consecrated  and 
selfishness  perverted.  The  age  in  which  religious  and  po- 
litical excitements  were  united  had  passed  away ;  with  the 
period  of  commercial  influence,  fanaticism  had  no  sympathy. 
Mystic  piety,  more  intense  by  its  aversion  to  the  theories 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  appeared  as  the  rainbow;  and 
Wesley  was  as  the  sower,  who  comes  after  the  clouds  have 
been  lifted  up  and  the  floods  have  subsided,  and  scatters 


1736.  COLONIZATION  OF  GEORGIA.  569 

his  seed  in  the  serene  hour  of  peace.  The  new  devotees, 
content  to  remain  under  the  guardianship  of  the  established 
government,  sought  to  enjoy  the  exquisite  delights  of  re- 
ligious sensibility,  not  to  overthrow  dynasties  or  to  break 
the  bonds  of  colonial  dependence.  By  John  Wesley,  there- 
fore, who  resided  in  America  less  than  two  years,  no  share 
in  moulding  the  jjolitical  institutions  of  Georgia  was  exerted 
or  desired.  As  he  strolled  through  natural  avenues  of  pal- 
mettoes  and  evergreen  hollies  and  woods  sombre  with  hang- 
ing moss,  his  heart  gushed  forth  in  addresses  to  God : 
Is  there  a  thing  beneath  the  sun. 

That  strives  with  Thee  my  heart  to  share  ? 
Ah !  tear  it  thence,  and  reign  alone,  — 

The  Lord  of  every  motion  there. 
The  austerity  of  his  maxims  involved  him  in  controversies 
with  the  mixed  settlers  of  Georgia;  and  his  residence  in 
America  preceded  his  influence  on  the  religious  culture  of 
its  people.  His  brother  was  still  less  suited  to  shape  events  : 
the  privations  and  hardships  of  the  wilderness  among  rough 
associates  plunged  his  gentle  nature  into  the  depths  of  mel- 
ancholy and  homesickness ;  and,  at  this  time,  his  journal  is 
not  a  record  of  events  around  him,  but  rather  a  chronicle 
of  what  passed  within  himself,  the  groundless  jealousies  of 
a  pure  mind,  rendered  suspicious  by  pining  disease.  When 
afterwards  George  Whitefield  came,  his  intrepid  nature  did 
not  lose  its  cheerfulness  in  the  encounter  with  the  wilder- 
ness ;  incited  by  the  example  of  the  Lutheran  Salzburgers 
and  the  fame  of  the  Orphan  House  at  Halle,  he  founded 
and  sustained  an  orphan  house  at  Savannah  by  contribu- 
tions which  his  eloquence  extorted.  He  became  more 
nearly  identified  with  America,  visited  all  the  provinces 
from  Florida  to  the  northern  frontier,  and  made  his  grave 
in  New  England ;  but  he,  also,  swayed  no  legislatures,  and 
is  chiefly  remembered  for  his  power  of  reviving  religious 
convictions  in  the  multitude. 

At   once,    Oglethorpe   visited   the    Salzburgers   at       j^gg 
Ebenezer,  to  praise  their  good  husbandry  and  to  se-       '^j^- 
lect  the  site  of  their  new  settlement ;  of  which  the 
lines  were  no  sooner  drawn,  and  the  streets  laid  out       |l|o! 


570  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLIL 

by  an  engineer,  than  huts  covered  with  bark  rose  up,  and 
the  labors  of  the  field  were  renewed.  In  a  few  years,  the 
produce  of  raw  silk  by  the  Germans  amounted  to  ten 
thousand  pounds  a  year ;  and  indigo  became  a  staple.  In 
earnest  memorials,  they  deprecated  the  employment  of 
negro  slaves,  pleading  the  ability  of  the  white  man  to  toil 
even  under  the  suns  of  Georgia.  Their  religious  affections 
bound  them  together  in  the  unity  of  brotherhood;  their 
controversies  were  decided  among  themselves ;  every  event 
of  life  had  its  moral ;  and  the  fervor  of  their  worship  never 
disturbed  their  healthy  tranquillity  of  judgment.  They 
were  cheerful  and  at  peace. 

1736.  From  the  Salzburger  towns,  Oglethorpe  hastened 
Feb.  16.  to  the  southward,  passing  in  a  scout  boat  through 
the  narrow  inland  channels,  which  delighted  the  eye  by 
their  sea-green  color  and  stillness,  and  were  sheltered  by 
woods  of  pines,  and  evergreen  oaks,  and  cedars,  that 
Feb.  18.  came  close  to  the  water's  side.  On  the  second  day, 
aided  by  the  zeal  of  his  own  men  and  by  Indians 
skilful  in  using  the  oar,  he  arrived  at  St.  Simon's  Island. 
A  fire,  kindling  the  long  grass  on  an  old  Indian  field, 
cleared  a  space  for  the  streets  of  Frederica;  and,  amidst 
the  noisy  mirth  and  carols  of  the  rice,  the  red,  and  the 
mocking  bird,  a  fort  was  constructed  on  the  centre  of  the 
bluff,  with  four  bastions  commanding  the  river  and  pro- 
tecting the  palmetto  bowers,  which,  each  twenty  feet  by 
fourteen,  were  set  up  on  forks  and  poles  in  regular  rows ;  a 
tight  and  convenient  shelter. 

It  was  but  ten  miles  from  Frederica  to  the  Scottish  settle- 
ment at  Darien.  To  give  heart  to  them  by  his  presence, 
Oglethorpe,  in  the  Highland  costume,  sailed  up  the  Alata- 
maha  ;  and  all  the  Highlanders,  as  they  perceived  his  ap- 
proach, assembled  with  their  plaids,  broadswords,  targets, 
and  fire-arms,  to  bid  him  welcome.  The  brave  men  were 
pleased  that  a  town  was  to  be  settled,  that  ships  were  to 
come  up  so  near  them,  and  that  they  now  had  a  communica- 
tion by  land  with  Savannah.  The  "  boggy  places  "  proved 
to  be  not  quite  impassable ;  "  two  rivers,"  that  had  no  ford, 
could  be  crossed  by  swimming ;  and  trees  had  been  blazed 
all  the  way  for  a  "  horse-road." 


1736.  COLONIZATION  OF  GEORGIA.  571 

It  remained  to  vindicate  the  boundaries  of  Georgia.  j^gg 
The  messenger  who,  in  February,  had  been  despatched  -^i*"!- 
to  St.  Augustine,  had  not  returned.  Oglethorpe  resolved 
himself  to  sustain  the  pretensions  of  Great  Britain  to  the 
territory  as  far  south  as  the  St.  John's,  and  the  High- 
landers volunteered  their  service.  With  their  aid,  Apr.  is. 
he  explored  the  channels  south  of  Frederica;  and,  on 
the  island  to  which  Tomo-chichi  gave  the  name  of  Cumber- 
land, he  marked  out  a  fort  to  be  called  St.  Andrew's.  But 
Oglethorpe  still  pressed  forward  to  the  south.  Passing 
Amelia  Island,  and  claiming  the  St.  John's  River  as  the 
southern  boundary  of  the  territory  possessed  by  the  Indian 
subjects  of  England  at  the  time  of  the  treaty  at  Utrecht,  on 
the  southern  extremity  of  the  island  at  the  entrance  of  that 
stream,  where  myrtles  and  palmettoes  abounded,  and  wild 
grape-vines,  climbing  to  the  summit  of  trees,  formed  as 
beautiful  walks  as  art  could  have  designed,  he  planted  the 
Fort  St.  George  for  the  defence  of  the  British  frontier. 

Indignant  at  the  near  approach  of  the  English,  the  Span- 
iards of  Florida  threatened  opposition.     The  messengers  of 
Oglethorpe  were  detained  as  prisoners,  a4id  he  resolved  to 
claim   their  liberty.      The   rumors   of  his   intended 
expedition   had   reached   the   wilderness  ;    and   the      May. 
Uchees,  all  brilliantly  painted,  came  down  to  form 
an  alliance  and  to  grasp  the  hatchet.     Long  speeches  and 
the  exchange  of  presents  were  followed  by  the  war- 
dance.    Tomo-chichi  appeared  also,  with  his  warriors.  May  23. 
ever  ready  to  hunt  the  buffalo  along  the  frontiers  of 
Florida,  or  to  engage  in  warfare  with  the  few  planters  on 
that  peninsula ;  and  an  embarkation  was  made  for  the  pur- 
pose of  regulating  the  southern  boundary  of  the  British 
colonies. 

Oglethorpe  knew  that  the  Spaniards  had  been  tampering 
with  his  allies,  and  were  willing  to  cut  off  the  settlements 
in  Georgia  at  a  blow ;  the  promised  succors  from  England 
had  not  arrived.  But,  in  his  enthusiasm,  regardless  of 
incessant  toil,  regardless  of  himself ;  unlike  Baltimore  and 
Penn,  securing  domains  not  to  his  family,  but  to  emigrants ; 
unlike  so  many  royal  governors  at  the  north,  amassing  no 


572  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLIL 

lands,  and  not  even  appropriating  to  himself  permanently  a 
cottage  or  a  single  lot  of  fifty  acres,  —  he  resolved  to  assert 
the  claims  of  England,  and  preserve  his  colony  as  the  bul- 
wark of  English  North  America.  "To  me,"  said  he  to 
Charles  Wesley,  "  death  is  nothing."  "  If  separate  spirits," 
he  added,  "  regard  our  little  concerns,  they  do  it  as  men 
regard  the  follies  of  their  childhood."  The  people  at  Fred- 
erica  declared  to  him  their  readiness  to  die  in  defence  of 
the  place,  grieving  only  at  his  exposure  to  danger  without 
them. 

For  that  season,  active  hostilities  were  avoided  by  nego- 
tiation. The  Spaniards  did,  indeed,  claim  peremptorily  the 
whole  country  as  far  as  St.  Helena's  Sound ;  but  the  Eng- 
lish envoys  at  St.  Augustine  were  set  free ;  and,  if  the 
English  post  on  St.  George  was  abandoned,  St.  Andrew's, 
commanding  the  approach  to  the  St.  Mary's,  was  main- 
tained. Hence  the  St.  Mary's  ultimately  became  the  bound- 
ary of  the  colony  of  Oglethorpe. 

The  friendship  of  the  red  men  insured  the  safety  of  the 
English  settlements.     The  Chickasaws,  animated  by 
July,      their   victory   over   the    Illinois   and    D'Artaguette, 
came  down  to  narrate  how  unexpectedly  they  had 
been  attacked,   how   victoriously   they  had  resisted,  with 
what  exultations  they  had  consumed  their  prisoners  by  fire. 
Ever  attached  to  the  English,  they  now  deputed  thirty  war- 
riors, with  their  civil  sachem  and  war-chief,  to  make  an 
alliance  with  Oglethorpe,  whose  fame  had  reached  the  Mis- 
sissippi.    They  brought  for  him  an  Indian  chaplet,  made 
from  the  spoils  of  their  enemies,  glittering  with  feathers  of 
many  hues,  and  enriched  with  the  horns  of  buffaloes.     The 
Creeks,  Cherokees,  and  Chickasaws  were  his   unwavering 
friends,  and  even  the   Choctaws   covenanted  with  him  to 
receive  English  traders.     To  hasten  preparations  for 
Nov.  23.  the  impending  contest  with   Spain,  Oglethorpe  em- 
barked for  England.     He  could  report  to  the  trustees 
Jan.'^ig.  "  ^^^^*  ^^^®  colony  was  doing  well ;  that  Indians  from 
seven  hundred  miles'  distance  had  confederated  with 
him,  and  acknowledged  the  authority  of  his  sovereign." 


1739.      WAR  BETWEEN  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  SPAIN.      5T3 


CHAPTER   XLIII. 

WAR   BETWEEI?^    GREAT    BRITAIN    AND    SPAIN. 

1739-1748. 

Receiving  a  commission  as  brigadier-general,  with  a  mili- 
tary command  extending  over  South  Carolina,  Ogle- 
thorpe himself,  in  Great  Britain,  raised  and  disciplined       ^^^g; 
a  regiment ;  and,  after  an  absence  of  more  than  a 
year  and  a  half,  he  returned  to  Frederica.     There,  by 
the  industry  of  his  soldiers,  the  walls  of  the  fortress      gg^^; 
were  completed.     Their  ivy-mantled  ruins  are  still 
standing. 

At  Savannah,  he  was  welcomed  by  salutes  and  bon-  Oct.  20. 
fires.  But  he  refused  any  alteration  in  the  titles  of 
land.  The  request  for  the  allowance  of  slaves  he  rejected 
sternly,  declaring  that,  if  negroes  should  be  introduced  into 
Georgia,  "  he  would  have  no  further  concern  with  the  col- 
ony ; "  and  he  used  his  nearly  arbitrary  power  as  the  civil 
and  military  head  of  the  state,  the  founijer  and  delegated 
legislator  of  Georgia,  to  interdict  negro  slavery.  The  trus- 
tees applauded  this  decision,  and,  notwithstanding  "  repeated 
applications,"  "  persisted  in  denying  the  use  of  negroes ; " 
even  though  many  of  the  planters,  believing  success  impos- 
sible with  "  white  servants,"  prepared  to  desert  the  colony. 

The  openness  and  fidelity  of  Oglethorpe  preserved  the 
affection  of  the  natives.  Muskohgees  and  Chickasaws  came 
round  him  once  more,  to  renew  their  covenants  of  friend- 
ship. The  former  had,  from  the  first,  regarded  him  as  their 
father;  and,  as  he  had  made  some  progress  in  their  lan- 
guage, they  appealed  to  him  directly  in  every  emergency. 

Nor  was  this  all.  In  the  summer  of  1789,  the  civil  1739 
and  war  chiefs  of  the  Muskohgees  held  a  general  ^^s- 
council  in  Cowetas,  and  adjourned  it   to  Cusitas   on   the 


574  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLIIL 

Chattahoochee  ;  and  Oglethorpe,  making  his  way  through 
solitary  paths,  fearless  of  the  suns  of  summer,  the  night 
dews,  or  the  treachery  of  some  hireling  Indian,  came  into 
the  large  square  of  their  council-place,  to  distribute  pres- 
ents to  his  red  friends  ;  to  renew  and  explain  their  cove- 
nants; to  address  them  in  words  of  affection;  and  to 
smoke  with  their  nations  the  pipe  of  peace.  It  was  then 
agreed  that  the  ancient  love  of  the  tribes  to  the  British 
king  should  remain  unimpaired ;  that  the  lands  from  the 
St.  John's  to  the  Savannah,  between  the  sea  and  the  moun- 
tains, belonged  of  ancient  right  to  the  Muskohgees.  Their 
cession  to  the  English  of  the  land  on  the  Savannah,  as 
far  as  the  Ogeechee,  and  along  the  coast  to  the  St.  John's 
as  far  into  the  interior  as  the  tide  flows,  was,  with  a  few 
reservations,  confirmed  ;  and  the  entrance  to  the  rest  of 
their  domains  was  barred  for  ever  against  the  Spaniards. 
The  right  of  pre-emption  was  reserved  for  the  trustees  of 
Georgia  alone;  nor  might  they  enlarge  their  possessions 
except  with  the  consent  of  the  ancient  proprietaries  of 
the  soil. 

1739.  The  news  of  this  treaty  could  not  have  reached 

^^*-  England  before  the  negotiations  with  Spain  were 
abruptly  terminated.  Walpole  desired  peace;  he  pleaded 
for  it  in  the  name  of  national  honor,  of  justice,  and  of  the 
true  interests  of  commerce.  But  the  active  English  mind 
had  become  debauched  by  the  hopes  of  sudden  gains  and 
soured  by  disappointment,  and  was  resolved  on  illicit 
commerce,  or  on  plunder  and  conquest.  A  war  was  de- 
sired, not  because  England  insisted  on  cutting  logwood  in 
the  Bay  of  Honduras,  where  Spain  claimed  a  jurisdiction 
and  had  founded  no  settlements;  nor  because  the  South 
Sea  company  differed  with  the  king  of  Spain  as  to  the 
balances  of  their  accounts ;  nor  yet  because  the  boundary 
between  Carolina  and  Florida  was  still  in  dispute,  —  these 
differences  could  have  been  adjusted, — but,  as  all  agree,  be- 
cause English  "  merchants  were  not  permitted  to  smuggle 
with  impunity."  A  considerable  part  of  the  population  of 
Jamaica  was  sustained  by  the  profits  of  the  contraband 
trade  with  Spanish  ports ;  the  annual  ship  to  Porto  Bello, 


1739.      WAR  BETWEEN  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  SPAIN.      575 

wliich  the  assiento  permitted,  was  followed  at  a  distance  by 
smaller  vessels ;  and  fresh  bales  of  goods  were  nightly  in- 
troduced in  the  place  of  those  that  had  been  discharged 
during  the  day.  Not  only  did  the  slave-ships  assist  in 
violating  the  revenue  laws  of  Spain ;  British  smuggling 
vessels,  pretending  distress,  would  claim  the  right  by  treaty 
to  enter  the  Spanish  harbors  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  In 
consequence,  the  colonial  commerce  of  Spain  was  almost 
annihilated.  In  former  days,  the  tonnage  of  the  fleet  of 
Cadiz  had  amounted  to  fifteen  thousand  tons ;  it  was  now 
reduced  to  two  thousand  tons,  and  had  no  office  but  to 
carry  the  royal  revenues  from  America. 

The  monarch  of  Spain,  the  victim  of  bigoted  scruples, 
busy  in  celebrating  auto-da-fes  and  burning  heretics,  and 
regarding  as  an  affair  of  state  the  question  who  should  be 
revered  as  the  true  patron  saint  of  his  kingdom,  was  at  last 
roused  to  angry  impatience.  His  complaints,  when  ad- 
dressed to  England,  were  turned  aside ;  and  when  the 
Spanish  officers  showed  vigor  in  maintaining  the  commer- 
cial system  of  their  sovereign,  the  English  merchants  re- 
sented their  interference  as  the  ebullitions  of  pride  and 
the  wanton  aggressions  of  tyranny.  One  Jenkins,  who  to 
the  pursuits  of  smuggling  had  joined  maraudings  which 
might  well  have  been  treated  as  acts  of  piracy,  was  sum- 
moned to  the  bar  of  the  house  of  commons  to  give  evidence. 
The  tale  which  he  was  disciplined  to  tell  of  the  loss  of  one 
of  his  ears  by  Spanish  cruelty,  of  dishonor  offered  to  the 
British  flag  and  the  British  crown,  was  received  without 
distrust.  "  What  were  your  feelings,  when  in  the  hands  of 
such  barbarians?"  was  asked  by  a  member,  as  his  muti- 
lated ears  were  exhibited.  "  I  commended  my  soul  to  my 
God,"  answered  the  impudent  fabler,  "  and  my  cause  to  my 
country."  "  We  have  no  need  of  allies  to  enable  us  to 
command  justice ;  the  story  of  Jenkins  will  raise  volun- 
teers : "  such  was  the  cry  of  Pulteney,  resolved  to  find  fault 
at  any  rate,  and  to  embarrass  and  overthrow  the  adminis- 
tration of  Walpole.  The  clamor  of  orators  was  seconded 
by  the  poets  of  that  age  :  Pope,  in  his  dying  notes,  sneered 
at  the  timidity  which  was  willing  to  avoid  offence, 


576  COLONIAL  HISTOKY.  Chap.  XLIIL 

And  own  the  Spaniard  did  a  waggish  thing, 
Who  cropped  our  ears,  and  sent  them  to  the  king ; 
and  Samuel  Johnson,  in  more  earnest  language,  exclaims:  — 

Has  Heaven  reserved,  in  pity  to  the  poor, 

No  pathless  waste  or  undiscovered  shore  ? 

No  secret  island  in  the  boundless  main  ? 

No  peaceful  desert  yet  unclaimed  by  Spain  ? 
1739.  At  last,  a  convention  was  signed.      The   mutual 

'^*"*  claims  for  damnges  sustained  in  commerce  were  bal- 
anced and  liquidated;  and  while  the  king  of  Spain  de- 
manded of  the  South  Sea  company  sixty-eight  thousand 
pounds,  as  due  to  him  for  his  share  of  their  profits,  he 
agreed  to  pay,  as  an  indemnity  to  British  merchants  for 
losses  sustained  by  unwarranted  seizures,  the  sum  of  ninety- 
five  thousand  pounds.  On  these  questions,  no  dispute  re- 
mained but  the  trivial  one  whether  the  British  government 
should  guarantee  to  Spain  the  acknowledged  debt  of  the 
South  Sea  company.  The  question  with  regard  to  the 
boundaries  of  Florida  was  equally  well  settled ;  the  actual 
possessions  of  each  nation  were  to  remain  without  change 
till  commissioners  could  mark  the  boundary.  In  other 
words,  England  was  to  hold  undisturbed  jurisdiction  over 
the  country  as  far  as  the  mouth  of  the  St.  Mary's. 

It  is  to  the  honor  of  Walpole  that  he  dared  to  resist  the 
clamor  of  the  mercantile  interest,  and,  opposing  the  imbe- 
cile Duke  of  Newcastle,  advocated  the  acceptance  of  the 
convention.  "  It  requires  no  great  abilities  in  a  minister," 
he  said,  "  to  pursue  such  measures  as  may  make  a  war  un- 
avoidable. But  how  many  ministers  have  known  the  art 
of  avoiding  war  by  making  a  safe  and  honorable  peace?" 
"  The  convention,"  said  William  Pitt,  afterwards  Lord 
Chatham,  —  giving  an  augury,  in  his  first  speech  on  Ameri- 
can affairs,  that  his  political  career  might  be  marked  by 
energy,  but  not  by  superiority  to  the  selfish  prejudices  of 
nationality,  —  "the  convention  is  insecure,  unsatisfactory, 
and  dishonorable :  I  think,  from  my  soul,  it  is  nothing  but 
a  stipulation  for  national  ignominy.  The  complaints  of 
your  despairing  merchants  and  the  voice  of  England  have 
condemned  it.     Be  the  guilt   of  it  upon  the  head  of   the 


1739.      WAR  BETWEEN  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  SPAIN.      577 

advisers  ;  God  forbid  that  this  committee  should  share  the 
guilt  by  approving  it."  What  judgment  posterity  would 
form  of  Pulteney  was  foreshadowed  in  the  poetry  of  Aken- 
side  ;  but  there  was  no  need  of  awaiting  the  judgment  of 
posterity,  or  listening  to  the  indignation  of  contemporary  pa- 
triotism :  Pulteney  and  his  associates  stand  self-condemned. 
The  original  documents  demonstrate  "  the  extreme  injus- 
tice "  of  their  opposition.  "  It  was  my  fortune,"  said  Ed- 
mund Burke,  "  to  converse  with  those  who  principally 
excited  that  clamor.  None  of  them,  no,  not  one,  did  in 
the  least  defend  the  measure,  or  attempt  to  justify  their 
conduct." 

In  an  ill  hour  for  herself,  in  a  happy  one  for  Amer- 
ica, England,  on  the  twenty-third  of  October,  1739,  oct^23. 
declared  war  against  Spain.  If  the  rightfulness  of 
the  European  colonial  system  be  conceded,  the  declaration 
was  a  wanton  invasion  of  it  for  immediate  selfish  purposes  ; 
but,  in  endeavoring  to  open  the  ports  of  Spanish  America 
to  the  mercantile  enterprise  of  her  own  people,  she  was 
beginning  a  war  on  colonial  monopoly,  which  could  not  end 
till  American  colonies  of  her  own,  as  well  as  of  Spain, 
should  obtain  independence. 

To  acquire  possession  of  the  richest  portions  of 
Spanish  America,  Anson  was  sent  with  a  small  squad-  ^l^^^ 
ron  into  the  Pacific ;  but  disasters  at  sea  compelled 
him  to  renounce  the  hope  of  conquest,  and  seek  only  booty. 
As  he  passed  Cape  Horn,  the  winds,  of  which  the  fury  made 
an  ordinary  gale  appear  as  a  gentle  breeze,  scattered  his 
ships  ;  one  after  another  of  them  was  wrecked  or  disabled  ; 
and  at  last,  with  a  single  vessel,  after  circumnavigating  the 
globe,  he  returned  to  England,  laden  with  spoils,  rich  in 
adventures,  having  won  a  merited  celebrity  by  his  suffer- 
ings, his  good  judgment,  and  his  cheerful  perseverance ; 
while  the  brilliant  sketches  of  the  Ladrones  by  the  historian 
of  his  voyage  made  his  name  familiar  to  the  lovers  of 
romance  throughout  Europe. 

In   November,   1739,   Edward   Vernon,  with   six       1739. 
men-of-war,  appeared  off  Porto  Bello.      The  attack 
on  the  feeble  and  ill-supplied  garrison  began  on  the  twenty- 
voL.  II.  37 


578  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLIIL 

first ;  and,  on  the  next  day,  Yernon,  losing  but  seven  men, 
was  in  possession  of  the  town  and  the  castles.  A  booty  of 
ten  thousand  dollars,  and  the  pleasure  of  demolishing  the 
fortifications  of  the  place,  were  the  sole  fruits  of  the  enter- 
prise ;  and,  having  acquired  no  rightful  claim  to  glory, 
Yernon  returned  to  Jamaica.  Party  spirit  in  free  govern- 
ments sometimes  vitiates  the  contemporary  verdict  of  opin- 
ion. Yernon  belonged  to  the  opposition ;  and  the  enemies 
of  Walpole  exalted  his  praises,  till  his  heroism  was  made  a 
proverb,  his  birthday  signalized  by  lights  and  bonfires,  and 
his  head  selected  as  the  favorite  ornament  for  sign- 

1740.  posts.      Meantime,   he   took   and    demolished    Fort 
Chagre  on  this  side  of  the  Isthmus  of  Darien,  but 

without  result,  for  want   of  the  co-operation  of  Anson  at 
Panama. 

England  now  prepared  to  send  to  the  West  Indies  by  far 
the  largest  fleet  and  army  that  had  ever  appeared  in  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  summoned  the  colonies  north  of  Caro- 
lina to  contribute  four  battalions  to  the  armament.  No 
one  of  them  refused  its  quota ;  even  Pennsylvania  voted  a 
contribution  of  money,  and  thus  enabled  its  governor  to 
enlist  troops  for  the  occasion.  "  It  will  not  be  amiss,"  wrote 
Sir  Charles  Wager  to  Admiral  Yernon,  "for  both  French 
and  Spaniards  to  be  a  month  or  two  in  the  West  Indies 
before  us,  that  they  may  be  half-dead  and  half-roasted  before 
our  fleet  arrives."  So  the  expedition  from  England  did  not 
begin  its  voyage  till  October,  and,  after  stopping  for  water 
at  Dominica,  where  Lord  Cathcart,  the  commander  of  the 

land  forces,  fell  a  victim  to  the  climate,  reached  Ja- 
Jaif.^9.    i^aica  in  the  early  part  of  the  following  year.     He 

was  succeeded  by  the  inexperienced,  irresolute  Went- 
worth ;  the  naval  force  was  under  Yernon,  who  was  impa- 
tient of  contradiction,  and  ill  disposed  to  endure  even  an 
associate.  The  enterprise,  instead  of  having  one  good 
leader,  had  two  bad  ones. 

Wasting  at  Jamaica  the  time  from  the  ninth  of 

1741.  January,  1741,  till  near  the  end  of  the  month,  at  last, 
with  a  fleet  of  twenty-nine  ships  of  the  line,  beside 

about  eighty  smaller  vessels,  with  fifteen  thousand  sailors, 


1739.      WAR  BETWEEN  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  SPAIN.      579 

with  twelve  thousand  land  troops,  equipped  with  all  sorts  of 
warlike  instruments  and  every  kind  of  convenience,  Vernon 
weighed  anchor,  without  any  definite  purpose.  Havana  lay 
within  three  days'  sail ;  its  conquest  would  have  made  Eng- 
land supreme  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  But  Vernon  insisted 
on  searching  for  the  fleet  of  the  French  and  Spaniards  ;  and 
the  French  had  already  left  the  fatal  climate. 

The  council  of  war,  yielding  to  the  vehemence  of  Admiral 
Vernon,  resolved  to  attack  Carthagena,  the  strongest  place 
in  Spanish  America.  The  fleet  appeared  before  the  town 
on  the  fourth  of  March,  and  lost  five  days  by  inactivity. 
Fifteen  days  were  required  to  gain  possession  of  the  for- 
tress that  rose  near  the  entrance  to  the  harbor ;  the  Span- 
iards themselves  abandoned  Castillo  Grande.  It  remained 
to  storm  Fort  San  Lazaro,  which  commanded  the  town. 
The  attack,  devised  without  judgment,  was  made  by  twelve 
hundred  men  with  intrepidity;  but  the  assailants  were  re- 
pulsed with  the  loss  of  half  their  number,  while  the  admiral 
gave  no  timely  aid  to  the  land  forces,  and  discord  aggravated 
defeat.  Ere  long,  rains  set  in.  The  fever  of  the  low 
country  in  the  tropics  began  its  rapid  work;  every  hour 
swept  away  battalions;  the  dead  were  cast  into  the  sea, 
sometimes  without  winding-sheet  or  sinkers ;  the  hospital 
ships  were  crowded  in  the  three  days  that  elapsed  between 
the  descent  and  the  re-embarkation  ;  the  effective  land  force 
dwindled  from  six  thousand  six  hundred  to  three  thousand 
two  hundred.  The  English  could  only  demolish  the  fortifi- 
cations and  retire. 

In  July,  an  attack  on  Santiago  in  Cuba  was  meditated, 
and  abandoned  almost  as  soon  as  attempted. 

When,  late  in  November,  the  expedition  which  was  to  have 
prepared  the  way  for  conquering  Mexico  and  Peru  returned 
to  Jamaica,  the  total  loss  of  lives  was  estimated  at  about 
twenty  thousand,  of  whom  few  fell  by  the  enemy.  Of  the 
recruits  from  the  colonies,  nine  out  of  ten  fell  victims  to 
the  climate  and  the  service. 

In  March,  1742,  Vernon  and  Wentworth  planned  an  ex- 
pedition against  Panama ;  but,  on  reaching  Porto  Bello,  the 
design  was  voted  impracticable,  and  they  returned.     Mean- 


580  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLHI. 

time,  the  commerce  of  England  with  Spain  was  destroyed  ; 
the  assiento  was  inten-upted ;  even  the  contraband  was  im- 
paired ;  while  English  ships  became  the  plunder  of  priva- 
teers. England  had  made  no  acquisitions,  and  had  inflicted 
on  the  Spanish  West  Indies  far  less  evil  than  she  herself 
had  suffered. 

^^gg  On   receiving   instructions   from  England   of   the 

approaching  war  with  Spain,  Oglethorpe,  before  the 
close  of  the  year,  extended  the  boundaries  of  Georgia  once 
more  to  the  St.  John's,  and  in  the  first  week  of  1740  he 
entered  Florida.  Re-enforcements  from  South  Carolina  were 
delayed  so  long,  that  June  had  come  before  he  could  lead 
six  hundred  regular  troops,  four  hundred  militia  from  Caro- 
lina, and  two  hundred  Indian  auxiliaries,  to  the  walls 
jl^e*2.  ^^  ^^'  Augustine.  The  garrison,  commanded  by 
Monteano,  a  man  of  courage  and  energy,  had  already 
received  supplies.  For  nearly  five  weeks,  Oglethorpe  en- 
deavored, in  defiance  of  his  own  weakness  and  the  strength 
of  the  place,  to  devise  measures  for  victory,  but  in  vain. 
Threatened  with  desertion  by  his  troops,  he  returned  to 
Frederica  without  molestation.  The  faw  prisoners  whom 
he  made  were  kindly  treated ;  not  a  field,  nor  a  garden,  nor  a 
house  near  St.  Augustine  was  injured,  unless  by  the  Indians 
whose  cruelties  he  reproved  and  restrained. 

To  make  good  its  pretensions,  the  Spanish  gov- 
1742.  ernment  resolved  on  invading  Georgia.  In  1742,  it 
collected  its  forces  from  Cuba;  and  a  large  fleet, 
with  an  armament  of  which  the  force  has  been  greatly  ex- 
aggerated, sailed  towards  the  mouth  of  the  St.  Mary's. 
Fort  William,  which  Oglethorpe  had  constructed  at  the 
southern  extremity  of  Cumberland  Island,  defended  the 
entrance  successfully,  till,  fighting  his  way  through  Spanish 
vessels,  the  general  himself  re-enforced  it.  Then  returning 
to  St.  Simon's,  with  less  than  a  thousand  men,  he  prepared 
for  defence. 

On  the  fifth  of  July,  seven  days  after  it  first  came 
to  anchor  off  Simon's  Bar,  the  Spanish  fleet  of  thirty- 
six  vessels,  with  the  tide  of  flood  and  a  brisk  gale,  entered 
St.  Simon's  harbor,  and  succeeded  in  passing  the  English 


1743.      WAR  BETWEEN  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  SPAIN.      581 

batteries  on  the  southern  pomt  of  the  island.  The  general 
signalled  his  ships  to  run  up  to  Frederica,  and,  spiking  the 
guns  of  the  lower  fort,  withdrew  to  the  town ;  while  the 
Spaniards  landed  at  Gascoin's  Bluff,  and  took  possession  of 
the  camps  which  the  English  had  abandoned.  But,  in  con- 
structing the  road  to  Frederica,  Oglethorpe  had  left  a  morass 
on  the  one  side,  and  a  dense  oak  wood  on  the  other.  A 
body  of  Spaniards  advanced  within  a  mile  of  the 
town;  they  were  met  by  Oglethorpe  with  the  High-  jJfyV. 
land  company,  were  overcome,  pursued,  and  most  of 
them  killed  or  taken  prisoners.  A  second  party  of  the 
Spaniards  marched  to  the  assault;  at  a  spot  where  the 
narrow  avenue,  bending  with  the  edge  of  the  morass,  forms 
a  crescent,  they  fell  into  an  ambuscade,  and  were  driven 
back  with  a  loss  of  about  two  hundred  men,  leaving  to  the 
ground,  which  was  now  strown  with  the  dead,  the  name  of 
"  the  Bloody  Marsh."  During  the  night  of  the  four- 
teenth, the  Spaniards  re-embarked,  leaving  a  quan-  juiyii. 
tity  of  ammunition  and  guns  behind  them.  On  the 
eighteenth,  as  they  proceeded  to  the  south,  they  once  more 
attacked  Fort  William,  which  was  bravely  defended  by 
Stuart  and  his  garrison  of  fifty  men.  On  the  twenty-fourth 
of  July,  Oglethorpe  could  order  a  general  thanksgiving  for 
the  end  of  the  invasion. 

Florida  still  lingered  under  the  jurisdiction  of  Spain;  but 
its  limits  were  narrowed,  and  the  frontiers  of  Georgia  were 
safe  against  inroads.  After  a  year  of  tranquillity, 
Oglethorpe  sailed  for  England,  never  again  to  behold  July, 
the  colony  to  which  he  consecrated  the  disinterested 
toils  of  ten  years.  Gentle  in  nature ;  affable  even  to  talk- 
ativeness, and  slightly  boastful ;  hating  nothing  but  papists 
and  Spain ;  merciful  to  the  prisoner ;  a  father  to  the  emi- 
grant; the  unwavering  friend  of  Wesley;  the  constant 
benefactor  of  the  Moravians ;  honestly  zealous  for  the  con- 
version of  the  Indians ;  invoking  for  the  negro  the  panoply 
of  the  gospel;  the  reliever  of  the  poor,  —  his  name  became 
another  expression  for  "vast  benevolence  of  soul."  In  a 
commercial  period,  a  monarchist  in  the  state,  and  friendly 
to  the  church,  he  seemed  even  in  youth  like  the  relic  of  a 


582  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLIIL 

more  chivalrous  century.  His  life  was  prolonged  to  near 
fivescore ;  and,  even  in  the  last  year  of  it,  he  was  extolled 
as  "  the  finest  figure  "  ever  seen,  the  impersonation  of  ven- 
erable age ;  his  faculties  were  bright,  his  eye  undimmed  ; 
"heroic,  romantic,  and  full  of  the  old  gallantry,"  he  was 
like  the  sound  of  the  lyre,  as  it  still  vibrates  after  the  spirit 
that  sweeps  its  strings  has  passed  away.  His  legislation 
did  not  outlivd  his  power.  The  system  of  tail  male  went 
gradually  into  oblivion ;  the  importation  of  rum  ceased  to 
be  forbidden ;  slaves  from  Carolina  were  hired  by  the 
planter,  first  for  a  short  period,  then  for  life  or  a  hundred 
years.  Slavers  from  Africa  sailed  directly  to  Savannah,  and 
the  laws  against  them  were  not  rigidly  enforced.  White- 
field,  who  believed  that  God's  providence  would  certainly 
make  slavery  terminate  for  the  advantage  of  the  Africans, 
pleaded  before  the  trustees  in  its  favor,  as  essential  to  the 
prosperity  of  Georgia ;  even  the  poorest  people  desired  the 
change.  At  last  the  Salzburgers  began  to  think  that  negro 
slaves  might  be  employed  in  a  Christian  spirit ;  and 
1751.  that,  if  the  negroes  were  treated  in  a  Christian  man- 
ner, their  change  of  country  would  prove  to  them  a 
benefit.  A  message  from  Germany  assisted  to  hush  their 
.scruples.  "  If  you  take  slaves  in  faith  and  with  the  intent 
of  conducting  them  to  Christ,  the  action  will  not  be  a  sin, 
but  may  prove  a  benediction." 

After  the  departure  of  Oglethorpe,  the  southern  colonies 
enjoyed  repose ;  as  the  war  for  colonial  commerce  became 
merged  in  a  vast  European  struggle,  involving  the  prin- 
ciples and  the  designs  which  had  agitated  the  civil- 
1740.  ized  world  for  centuries.  In  France,  Fleury,  like 
Walpole  desiring  to  adhere  to  the  policy  of  peace, 
was,  like  Walpole,  overruled  by  selfish  rivals.  As  he  looked 
anxiously  upon  the  commotions  in  Europe,  it  appeared  to 
him  that  the  end  of  the  world  was  at  hand;  and  it  was  so 
with  regard  to  the  world  of  feudalism  and  Catholic  legiti- 
macy. He  expressed  his  aversion  to  all  wars;  and  when 
the  king  of  Spain  —  whom  natural  melancholy,  irritated  by 
ill-health  and  losses,  prompted  to  abdicate  the  throne  — 
obtained  of  Louis  XV.,  under  his  own  hand,  a  promise  of 


1744.      WAR  BETWEEN  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  SPAIN.      683 

fifty  ships  of  the  line,  the  prime  minister  explained  his  pur- 
poses :  "  I  do  not  propose  to  begin  a  war  with  England,  or 
to  seize  or  to  annoy  one  British  ship,  or  to  take  one  foot  of 
land  possessed  by  England  in  any  part  of  the  world.  Yet 
I  must  prevent  England  from  accomplishing  its  great  pur- 
pose of  appropriating  to  itself  the  entire  commerce  of  the 
West  Indies."  "France,  though  it  has  no  treaty  with 
Spain,  cannot  consent  that  the  Spanish  colonies  should  fall 
into  English  hands."  "  It  is  our  object,"  said  the  statesmen 
of  France,  "  not  to  make  war  on  England,  but  to  induce  it 
to  consent  to  a  peace." 

Such  was  the  wise  disposition  of  the  aged  Fleury,  when,  by 
the  death  of  Charles  VI.,  the  extinction  of  the  male  line  of 
the  house  of  Hapsburg  raised  a  question  about  the  Austrian 
succession.  The  pragmatic  sanction,  to  which  France  was 
a  party,  secured  the  Austrian  dominions  to  Maria  Theresa, 
the  eldest  daughter  of  Charles  VI. ;  while,  from  an  erudite 
genealogy  or  previous  marriages,  the  sovereigns  of  Spain, 
of  Saxony,  and  of  Bavaria,  each  derived  a  claim  to  the  un- 
divided heritage.  The  interest  of  the  French  king,  his 
political  system,  his  faith  as  pledged  by  a  solemn  treaty,  the 
advice  of  his  minister,  demanded  of  him  the  recognition  of 
the  rights  of  Maria  Theresa  in  their  integrity;  and  yet, 
swayed  by  the  intrigues  of  the  Belle-Isles  and  the  heredi- 
tary hatred  of  Austria,  without  one  decent  pretext,  he 
constituted  himself  the  centre  of  an  alliance  against  her. 
The  condition  of  European  political  relations  was  that  of 
tangled  intrigues.  No  statesman  of  that  day,  except  Fred- 
eric, seemed  in  any  degree  to  perceive  the  tendency  of 
events.  As  England,  by  its  arrogant  encroachments  on 
Spain,  unconsciously  enlarged  commercial  freedom,  and 
began  the  independence  of  colonies,  so  France,  by  its  un- 
justifiable war  on  Austria,  floated  from  its  moorings,  and 
foreboded  the  wreck  of  Catholic  legitimacy. 

In  the  great  European  contest,  England,  true  to  its  policy 
of  connecting  itself  with  the  second  continental  power, 
gave  subsidies  to  Austria.    The  fleets  of  England  and       ^^; 
France   meet    in    the   Mediterranean ;    the   fleet   of 
England  is  victoiious.     France  declares  war  against  Mar.  15. 


584  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLm. 

England ;  and  the  conflicts  in  America  are  lost  in  the  con- 
flagration of  Europe. 

Never  did  history  present  such  a  scene  of  confusion. 
While  the  selfishness  which  had  produced  the  general  war 
was  itself  without  faith,  it  made  use  of  all  the  resources 
that  were  offered  by  ancient  creeds  or  ancient  animosities, 
by  Protestantism  and  the  Roman  church,  legitimacy  and  the 
mercantile  system,  the  ancient  rivalry  of  France  and  Aus- 
tria, the  reciprocal  jealousies  of  France  and  England.  The 
enthusiasm  of  other  centuries  in  religious  strifes  was  extinct ; 
and  the  new  passion  for  popular  power  was  but  just  begin- 
ning to  swell.  Europe  rocked  like  the  ocean  on  the  lulling 
of  a  long  storm,  when  the  opposite  wind  has  just  sprung  up, 
throwing  the  heaving  billows  into  tumultuous  conflict. 

The  absence  of  purity  in  public  life  extinguished  attach- 
ment to  the  administration,  and  left  an  opportunity  to  the 
Pretender  to  invade  Great  Britain,  to  conquer  Scotland,  to 
advance  within  four  days'  march  of  London.  This  invasion 
had  no  partisans  in  America,  where  the  house  of  Hanover 
was  respected  as  the  representative  of  Protestantism.  In 
England,  the  vices  of  the  reigning  family  had  produced  dis- 
gust and  indifference,  and  renewed  the  question  of  a  choice 
of  dynasty;  America  was  destined  to  elect  not  between 
kings,  but  forms  of  government ;  while  the  civil  war  in  the 
mother  country  brought  to  her  colonists  from  Scotland. 

On  the  continent,  France  gained  fruitless  victories.  Her 
flag  waved  over  Prague  only  to  be  struck  down.  Saxony, 
Bavaria,  her  allies  on  the  borders  of  Austria,  one 
1745.  after  another,  abandoned  her.  The  fields  of  blood  at 
1747'.  Fontenoy,  at  Raucoux,  -at  Laffeldt,  were  barren  of 
results  ;  for  the  collision  of  armies  was  but  an  unmean- 
ing, selfish  collision  of  brute  force.  Statesmen  scoffed  at 
virtue,  and  she  avenged  herself  by  bringing  their  counsels 
to  nought.  In  vain  did  they  marshal  all  Europe  in  hostile 
array ;  they  had  no  torch  of  truth  to  pass  from  nation  to 
nation ;  and  therefore,  though  they  could  besiege  cities  and 
burn  the  granges  of  the  peasant,  yet,  except  as  their  pur- 
poses were  overruled,  their  lavish  prodigality  of  treasure 
and  honor  and  life  was  fruitless  to  humanity. 


1747.      WAR  BETWEEN  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  SPAIN.      585 

One  result,  however,  of  which  the  character  did  not  at 
first  appear,  was  during  the  conflict  achieved  in  the  north. 
Protestantism  was  represented  on  the  continent  by  no  great 
power.  Frederic  II.,  a  pupil  of  Leibnitz  and  Wolf,  took 
advantage  of  the  confusion,  and  with  the  happy  audacity  of 
youth,  and  a  discreet  ambition  which  knew  where  to  set 
bounds  to  its  own  impetuosity,  wrested  Silesia  from  Aus- 
tria. Indifferent  to  alliances  with  powers  which,  having  no 
fixed  aims,  could  have  no  fixed  friendships,  he  entered  into 
the  contest  alone  and  withdrew  from  it  alone.  Twice 
assuming  arms  and  twice  concluding  a  separate  peace,  J![g; 
he  retired  with  a  guarantee  from  England  of  the  ac- 
quisitions which,  aided  by  the  power  of  opinion,  constituted 
his  monarchy  the  central  point  of  political  interest  on  the 
continent  of  Europe. 

In  the  East  Indies,  the  commercial  companies  of  France 
and  England  struggled  for  supremacy.  The  empire  of  the 
Great  Mogul  lay  in  ruins,  inviting  a  restorer.  But  who 
should  undertake  its  reconstruction?  An  active  instinct 
urged  the  commercial  world  of  England  to  seek  a  nearer 
connection  with  Hindostan ;  again  the  project  of  dis- 
covering a  north-western  passage  to  India  was  re-  JJJ^; 
newed ;  and,  to  encourage  the  spirit  of  adventurous 
curiosity,  the  English  parliament  promised  liberal  rewards 
for  success.  Meantime,  the  French  company  of  the  Indies, 
aided  by  the  king,  confirmed  its  power  at  Pondicherry  ;  but 
as  the  Sorbonne  had  published  to  a  credulous  nation  that 
dividends  on  the  stock  of  the  commercial  company  would 
be  usurious  and  therefore  a  crime  against  religion,  the  cor- 
poration was  unfortunate,  though  private  merchants  were 
gaining  wealth  in  the  Carnatic  and  on  the  Ganges.  The 
brave  mariner  from  St.  Malo,  the  enterprising  La  Bourdon- 
nais,  from  his  government  in  the  Isle  of  France,  devised 
schemes  of  conquest.  But  the  future  was  not  foreseen  ; 
and,  limited  by  instructions  from  the  French  ministers  to 
make  no  acquisitions  of  territory  whatever,  though,  with 
the  aid  of  the  governor  of  Pondicherry,  he  might  have 
gained  for  France  the  ascendency  in  Hindostan,  he  pledged 
his  word  of  honor  to  restore  Madras  to  the  English,  in  the 


586  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLIII. 

1746.  very  hour  of  victory,  when  he  proudly  planted  the 
Sept.  flag  of  France  on  the  fortress  of  the  city  which,  next 
to  Goa  and  Batavia,  was  the  most  opulent  of  the  European 
establishments  in  India. 

Russia  was  invoked  to  take  part  in  the  contest ;  and,  in 
her  first  political  associations  with  our  country,  she  was  the 
stipendiary  of  England.  By  her  interference,  she  hastened 
the  return  of  peace.  But,  at  an  earlier  period  of  the  war, 
she  had,  in  the  opposite  direction,  drawn  near  our  present 
borders.  After  the  empire  of  the  czars  had  been  extended 
over  Kamtschatka,  Peter  the  Great  had  planned  a  voyage 
of  discovery  along  the  shores  of  Asia;  and,  in  1728,  Behring 

demonstrated  the  insulation  of  that  continent  on  the 
juSe'4.    ^^^^'     III  1741,  the  same  intrepid  navigator,  sailing 

with  two  vessels  from  Okhotsk,  discovered  the  nar- 
row straits  which  divide  the  continents;  caught  glimpses 

of  the  mountains  of  North-west  America  ;  traced  the 
Dec.  8.    line  of  the  Aleutian  archipelago ;  and,  in  the  midst  of 

snows  and  ice,  fell  a  victim  to  fatigue  on  a  desert 
island  of  the  group  which  bears  his  name.  The  gallant 
Danish  mariner  did  not  know  that  he  had  seen  America ; 
and,  though  Russia  by  right  of  discovery  thus  gained  the 
north-west  of  our  continent,  no  conception  dawned  on  the 
lewd  revellers  who  surrounded  the  empress  Elizabeth,  of 
the  political  institutions  which  already  felt  the  weight  of 
her  influence  in  diplomacy. 

While  the  states  of  Europe,  by  means  of  their  wide  rela- 
tions, were  fast  forming  the  nations  of  the  whole  world  into 
one  political  system,  the  few  incidents  of  war  in  our  Amer- 
ica could  obtain  no  interest.  The  true  theatre  of  the  war 
was  not  there.  A  proposition  was  brought  forward  to 
form  a  union  of  all  the  colonies,  for  the  purposes  of  defence ; 
but  danger  was  not  so  universal  or  so  imminent  as  to  fur- 
nish a  sufficient  motive  for  a  confederacy.  The  peace  of 
the  central  provinces  was  unbroken  ;  the  government  of 
Virginia  feared  dissenters  more  than  Spaniards.  In  one 
of  its  counties  in  the  south-west  range,  Morris  chanced  to 
have  a  copy  of  Luther  on  Galatians  and  Bunyan's  works, 
and  read  from  them  every  Lord's  Day  to  his  neighbors.     A 


1744.      WAR  BETWEEN  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  SPAIN.      587 

meeting-house  was  built  for  him  to  read  in.      His 
fame  spread,  and  he  was  taken  up  for  examination ;       1743. 
but,  when  asked  of  what  sect  he  was,  he  could  not 
tell.     In  the  glens  of  the  Old  Dominion,  he  had  not  heard 
of  sects ;  he  knew  not  that  men  could  disagree. 

At  Lancaster  in  Pennsylvania,  the  governor  of  that  state, 
with  commissioners  from  Maryland   and  from  Vir- 
ginia, in  1744,  met  the  deputies  of  the  Iroquois,  who       1744. 
since  the  union  with  the  Tuscaroras  became  known 
as  the   Six  Nations.     "  We   conquered,"   said   they,   *'  the 
country  of  the  Indians  beyond  the  mountains  :  if  the  Vir- 
ginians ever  gain    a  good  right  to   it,  it  must  be  by  us." 
And,  for  about  four  hundred  pounds,  the  deputies  of 
the  Six  Nations  made  "  a  deed  recognising  the  king's    July  2. 
right  to  all  the  lands  that  are  or  shall  be,  by  his  maj- 
esty's appointment,  in  the  colony  of  Virginia."     The  lands 
in  Maryland  were  in  like  manner  confirmed  to  Lord  Balti- 
more, but  with  definite  limits;  the  deed  to  Virginia  ex- 
tended the  claim  of  that  colony  indefinitely  in  the  west  and 
north-west. 

The  events  of  the  war  of  England  with  France  were  then 
detailed,  and  the  conditions  of  the  former  treaties  of  alli- 
ance were  called  to  mind.  "  The  covenant  chain  between 
us  and  Pennsylvania,"  replied  Canassatego,  "  is  an  ancient 
one,  and  has  never  contracted  rust.  We  shall  have  all  your 
country  under  our  eye.  Before  we  came  here,  we  told 
Onondio  there  was  room  enough  at  sea  to  fight,  where  he 
might  do  what  he  pleased ;  but  he  should  not  come  upon 
our  land  to  do  any  damage  to  our  brethren."  After  a 
pause,  it  was  added :  "  The  Six  Nations  have  a  great  author- 
ity over  the  praying  Indians,  who  stand  in  the  gates  of 
the  French:  to ' show  our  further  care,  we  have  engaged 
these  very  Indians  and  other  allies  of  the  French ;  they 
have  agreed  with  us  they  will  not  join  against  you."  Then 
the  chain  of  union  was  made  as  bright  as  the  sun.  The 
Virginians  proposed  to  educate  the  children  of  the  Iroquois 
at  their  public  school.  "  Brother  Assaragoa,"  they  replied, 
"  we  must  let  you  know  we  love  our  children  too  well  to 
send  them  so  great  a  way  ;  and  the  Indians  are  not  inclined 


588  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLIII. 

to  give  their  children  learning.  Your  invitation  is  good, 
but  our  customs  differ  from  yours."  And  then,  acknowledg- 
ing the  rich  gifts  from  the  three  provinces,  they  continued, 
as  if  aware  of  their  doom  :  "  We  have  provided  a  small 
present  for  you ;  but,  alas  !  we  are  poor,  and  shall  ever 
remain  so,  as  long  as  there  are  so  many  Indian  traders 
among  us.  Theirs  and  the  white  people's  cattle  eat  up  all 
the  grass,  and  make  deer  scarce."  And  they  presented 
three  bundles  of  skins.     At  the  close  of  the  conference,  the 

Indians  gave,  in  their  order,  five  loud  cries ;  and  the 
j™*4.    English  agents,  after  a  health  to  the  king  of  England 

and  the  Six  Nations,  put  an  end  to  the  assembly  by 
three  huzzas.  Thus  did  Great  Britain  at  once  confirm  its 
claims  to  the  basin  of  the  Ohio,  and  protect  its  northern 
frontier. 

The  sense  of  danger  led  the  Pennsylvanians  for  the  first 
time  to  a  military  organization  effected  by  a  voluntary  sys- 
tem, under  the  influence  of  Franklin.     "He  was  the  sole 

author  of  two  lotteries,  that  raised  above  six  thou- 
1747.       sand  pounds  to  pay  for  the  charge  of  batteries  on  the 

river ; "  and  he  "  found  a  way  to  put  the  country  on 
raising  above  one  hundred  and  twenty  companies  of  militia, 
of  which  Philadelphia  raised  ten,  of  about  a  hundred  men 
each."  "  The  women  were  so  zealous  that  they  furnished 
ten  pairs  of  silk  colors,  wrought  with  various  mottoes."  Of 
the  Quakers,  many  admitted  the  propriety  of  self-defence. 
"  I  principally  esteem  Benjamin  Franklin,"  wrote  Logan, 
*'  for  saving  the  country  by  his  contriving  the  militia.  He 
was  the  prime  actor  in  all  this  ;  "  and,  when  elected  to  the 
command  of  a  regiment,  he  declined  the  distinction,  and,  as 
a  humble  volunteer,  "  himself  carried  a  musket  among  the 
common  soldiers." 

1744.  A  body  of  French  from  Cape  Breton,  before  the 

^^y*  news  of  the  declaration  of  war  with  France  had  been 
received  in  New  England,  surprised  the  little  English  garri- 
son at  Canso ;  destroyed  the  fishery,  the  fort,  and  the  other 
buildings  there  ;  and  removed  eighty  men,  as  prisoners  of 
war,  to  Louisburg.  The  fortifications  of  Annapolis,  the  only 
remaining  defence  of  Nova  Scotia,  were  in  a  state  of  ruin. 


1745.      WAR  BETWEEN  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  SPAIN.      589 

An  attack  made  upon  it  by  Indians  in  the  service  of  the 
French,  accompanied  by  Le  Loutre,  their  missionary,  was 
with  difficulty  repelled.  The  inhabitants  of  the  province, 
sixteen  thousand  in  number,  were  of  French  origin ;  and  a 
revolt  of  the  people,  with  the  aid  of  Indian  allies,  might 
have  once  more  placed  France  in  possession  of  it.  While 
William  Shirley,  the  governor  of  Massachusetts,  foresaw 
the  danger,  and  solicited  aid  from  England,  the  officers  and 
men  taken  at  Canso,  after  passing  the  summer  in  captivity 
at  Louisburg,  were  sent  to  Boston  on  parole.  They  brought 
accurate  accounts  of  the  condition  of  that  fortress  ;  and 
Shirley  resolved  on  an  enterprise  for  its  reduction.  The 
fishermen,  especially  of  Marblehead,  interrupted  in  their 
pursuits  by  the  war,  disdained  an  idle  summer,  and  entered 
readily  into  the  design.  The  legislature  of  Massa- 
chusetts, after  some  hesitation,  resolved  on  the  expe-  j^f^; 
dition  by  a  majority  of  one  vote.  Solicited  to  render 
assistance,  New  York  sent  a  small  supply  of  artillery,  and 
Pennsylvania  of  provisions ;  New  England  alone  furnished 
men  ;  of  whom,  Connecticut  raised  five  hundred  and  six- 
teen ;  New  Hampshire  —  to  whose  troops  Whitefield  gave, 
as  Charles  Wesley  had  done  to  Oglethorpe,  the  motto, 
*'  Nothing  is  to  be  despaired  of,  with  Christ  for  the  leader  " 
—  contributed  a  detachment  of  three  hundred  and  four ; 
while  the  forces  levied  for  the  occasion  by  Massachusetts 
exceeded  three  thousand  volunteers.  Three  hundred  men 
sailed  from  Rhode  Island,  but  too  late  for  active  service. 
An  express-boat  requested  the  co-operation  of  Commodore 
Warren  at  Antigua,  with  such  ships  as  could  be  spared  from 
the  leeward  islands;  but,  in  a  consultation  with  the  captains 
of  his  squadron,  it  was  unanimously  resolved,  in  the  absence 
of  directions  from  England,  not  to  engage  in  the  scheme. 

Thus,  then,  relying  on  themselves,  the  volunteers  April, 
of  New  Hampshire  and  Massachusetts,  with  a  mer- 
chant, William  Pepperell  of  Maine,  for  their  chief  com- 
mander, met  at  Canso.  The  inventive  genius  of  New 
England  had  been  aroused ;  one  proposed  a  model  of  a  fly- 
ing bridge,  to  scale  the  walls  even  before  a  breach  should 
be  made ;  another  was  ready  with  a  caution  against  mines  ; 


590  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLIIL 

a  third,  who  was  a  minister,  presented  to  the  merchant 
general,  ignorant  of  war,  a  plan  for  encamping  the  army, 
opening  trenches,  and  placing  batteries.  Shirley,  wisest  of 
all,  gave  instructions  for  the  fleet  of  a  hundred  vessels  to 
arrive  together  at  a  precise  hour ;  heedless  of  the  surf,  to 
land  in  the  dark  on  the  rocky  shore ;  to  march  forthwith, 
through  thicket  and  bog,  to  the  city,  and  beyond  it ;  and  to 
take  the  fortress  and  royal  battery  by  surprise  before  day- 
break. Such  was  the  confiding  spirit  at  home.  The  expe- 
dition itself  was  composed  of  fishermen,  who,  in  time  of 
war,  could  no  longer  use  the  hook  and  line  on  the  Grand 
Bank,  but  with  prudent  forethought  took  with  them  their 
cod-lines ;  of  mechanics,  skilled  from  childhood  in  the  use 
of  the  gun  ;  of  lumberers,  inured  to  fatigue  and  encamp- 
ments in  the  woods  ;  of  husbandmen  from  the  interior,  who 
had  grown  up  with  arms  in  their  hands,  accustomed  to  dan- 
ger, keenest  marksmen,  disciplined  in  the  pursuit  of  larger 
and  smaller  game ;  all  volunteers  ;  all  commanded  by  ofii- 
cers  from  among  themselves ;  many  of  them  church  mem- 
bers ;  almost  all  having  wives  and  children.  On  the 
ApS'7.  fi^s^  Sabbath,  how  did  "the  very  great  company  of 
people  "  come  together  on  shore,  to  hear  the  sermon 
on  enlisting  as  volunteers  in  the  service  of  the  Great  Cap- 
tain of  our  salvation!  As  the  ice  of  Cape  Breton  was 
drifting  in  such  heaps  that  a  vessel^could  not  enter  its  har- 
bors, the  New  England  fleet  was  detained  many  days  at 
Canso,  when,  under  a  clear  sky  and  a  bright  sun,  the 
Apr.  23.  squadron  of  Commodore  Warren  happily  arrived. 
Hardly  had  his  council  at  Antigua  declined  the  entei*- 
prise,  when  instructions  from  England  bade  him  render 
every  aid  to  Massachusetts ;  and,  learning  at  sea  the  em- 
barkation of  the  troops,  he  sailed  directly  to  Canso. 
Apr.  24.  The  next  day  arrived  nine  vessels  from  Connecticut 
with  the  forces  from  that  colony  in  high  spirits  and 
good  health. 

On  the  last  day  of  April,  an  hour  after  sunrise,  the  armar 
ment,  in  a  hundred  vessels  of  New  England,  entering  the 
Bay  of  Chapeau  Rouge,  or  Gabarus,  as  the  English  called 
it,  came  in  sight  of  Louisburg.     Its  walls,  raised  on  a  neck 


1745.       WAR  BETWEEN  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  SPAIN.      591 

of  land  on  the  south  side  of  the  harbor,  forty  feet  thick  at  the 
base,  and  from  twenty  to  thirty  feet  high,  all  within  sweep 
of  the  bastions,  surrounded  by  a  ditch  eighty  feet  wide, 
were  furnished  with  one  hundred  and  one  cannon,  seventy- 
six  swivels,  and  six  mortars.  The  harbor  was  defended  by 
an  island  battery  of  thirty  twenty-two  pounders,  and  by 
the  royal  battery  on  the  shore,  having  thirty  large  cannon, 
a  moat  and  bastions,  all  so  perfect  that  it  was  thought  two 
hundred  men  could  have  defended  it  against  five  thousand. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  New  England  forces  had  but  eigh- 
teen cannon  and  three  mortars  ;  but  no  sooner  did  they 
come  in  sight  of  the  city,  than,  letting  down  the  whale- 
boats,  "  they  flew  to  shore,  like  eagles  to  the  quarry."  The 
French  that  came  down  to  prevent  the  landing  were 
put  to  flight,  and  driven  into  the  woods.  On  the 
next  day,  a  detachment  of  four  hundred  men,  led  May^i. 
by  William  Yaughan,  a  volunteer  from  New  Hamp- 
shire, marched  by  the  city,  which  it  greeted  with  three 
cheers,  and  took  post  near  the  north-east  harbor.  The 
French  who  held  the  royal  battery,  struck  with  panic, 
spiked  its  guns,  and  abandoned  it  in  the  night.  In  the 
morning,  boats  from  the  city  came  to  recover  it ;  but 
Vaughan  and  thirteen  men,  standing  on  the  beach,  kept 
them  from  landing  till  a  re-enforcement  arrived.  To  a 
major  in  one  of  the  regiments  of  Massachusetts,  Seth  Pome- 
roy  from  Northampton,  a  gunsmith,  was  assigned  the  over- 
sight of  above  twenty  smiths  in  drilling  the  cannon,  which 
were  little  injured ;  and  the  fire  from  the  city  and  the 
island  battery  was  soon  returned.  "  Louisburg,"  wrote 
Pomeroy  to  his  family,  "is  an  exceedingly  strong  place, 
and  seems  impregnable.  It  looks  as  if  our  campaign  would 
last  long ;  but  I  am  willing  to  stay  till  God's  time  comes 
to  deliver  the  city  into  our  hands."  "Suffer  no  anxious 
thought  to  rest  in  your  mind  about  me,"  replied  his  wife, 
from  the  bosom  of  New  England.  "  The  whole  town  is 
much  engaged  with  concern  for  the  expedition,  how  Provi- 
dence will  order  the  affair,  for  which  religious  meetings 
every  week  are  maintained.  I  leave  you  in  the  hand  of 
God." 


592  COLONIAL  HISTOKY.  Chap.  XLIIL 

The  troops  made  a  jest  of  technical  military  terms  ;  they 
laughed  at  proposals  for  zigzags  and  epaulements.  The 
light  of  nature,  however,  taught  them  to  erect  fascine  bat- 
teries at  the  west  and  south-west  of  the  city.  Of  these, 
the  most  effective  was  commanded  by  Tidcomb,  whose 
readiness  to  engage  in  hazardous  enterprises  was  justly  ap- 
plauded. As  it  was  necessary,  for  the  purposes  of  attack, 
to  drag  the  cannon  over  boggy  morasses,  impassable  for 
wheels,  Meserve,  a  New  Hampshire  colonel,  who  was  a 
carpenter,  constructed  sledges  ;  and  on  these  the  men,  with 
straps  over  their  shoulders,  sinking  to  their  knees  in  mud, 
drew  them  safely.  Thus  the  siege  proceeded  in  a  random 
manner.  The  men  knew  little  of  strict  discipline  ;  they 
had  no  fixed  encampment ;  their  lodgings  were  turf  and 
brush  houses ;  their  bed  was  the  earth,  dangerous  resting- 
place  for  those  of  the  people  "  unacquainted  with  lying  in 
the  woods."  Yet  the  weather  was  fair;  and  the  atmos- 
phere, usually  thick  with  palpable  fogs,  was  during  the 
whole  time  singularly  dry.  All  day  long,  the  men,  if  not 
on  duty,  were  busy  with  amusements,  —  firing  at  marks, 
fishing,  fowling,  wrestling,  racing,  or  running  after  balls 
shot  from  the  enemy's  guns.  The  feebleness  of  the  garri- 
son, which  had  only  six  hundred  regular  soldiers,  with 
about  a  thousand  Breton  militia,  prevented  sallies;  the 
hunting-parties,  as  vigilant  for  the  trail  of  an  enemy  as  for 
game,  rendered  a  surprise  by  land  impossible ;  while  the 
fleet  of  Admiral  Warren  guarded  the  approaches  by  sea. 

Four  or  five  attempts  to  take  the  island  battery,  which 
commanded  the  entrance  to  the  harbor,  had  failed.  The 
failure  is  talked  of  among  the  troops ;  a  party  of  volunteers, 
after  the  fashion  of  Indian  expeditions,  under  a   chief  of 

their  own  election,  enlist  for  a  vigorous  attack  by 
Mayle.  iiig^t  j    "  but   now   Providence   seemed  remarkably 

to  frown  upon  the  affair."  The  assailants  are  dis- 
covered; a  murderous  fire  strikes  their  boats  before  they 
land ;  only  a  part  of  them  reach  the  island ;  a  severe  con- 
test for  near  an  hour  ensues ;  those  who  can  reach  the  boats 
escape,  with  the  loss  of  sixty  killed  and  one  hundred  and 
sixteen  taken  prisoners. 


r 


n 


1746.      WAR  BETWEEN  (JREAT  BRITAIN  AND  SPAIN.     593 

To  annoy  the  island  battery,  the  Americans,  under  the 
direction  of  Gridley  of  Boston,  erected  a  battery  near  the 
north  cape  of  the  harbor,  on  the  Light-house  Cliff;  and 
within  two  hundred  yards  of  the  city,  trenches  had  been 
thrown  up  near  an  advanced  post,  which  with  guns  from 
the  royal  battery  played  upon  the  north-west  gate  of  Louis- 
burg. 

Still  no  breach  had  been  effected,  while  the  labors  of  the 
garrison  were  making  the  fortifications  stronger  than  ever. 
The  expedition  must  be  abandoned,  or  the  walls  of  the  city 
scaled.  The  naval  officers,  who  had  been  joined  by  several 
ships-of-war,  ordered  from  England  on  the  service,  agreed 
to  sail  into  the  harbor  and  bombard  the  city,  while  the 
land  forces  were  to  attempt  to  enter  it  by  storm.  But, 
strong  as  were  the  works,  the  garrison  was  discontented ; 
and  Duchambon,  their  commander,  ignorant  of  his  duties. 
The  "  Vigilant,"  a  French  ship  of  sixty-four  guns,  laden 
with  military  stores  for  his  supply,  had  been  decoyed 
by  Douglas,  of  the  "  Mermaid,"  into  the  English  fleet,  Mayls. 
and,  after  an  engagement  of  some  hours,  had  been 
taken  in  sight  of  the  besieged  town.  The  desponding  gov- 
ernor sent  out  a  flag  of  truce ;  terms  of  capitulation  were 
accepted  ;  on  the  seventeenth  of  June,  the  city,  the  fort,  the 
batteries,  were  surrendered ;  and  a  New  England  minister 
soon  preached  in  the  French  chapel.  As  the  troops,  march- 
ing into  the  place,  beheld  its  strength,  their  hearts  for  the 
first  time  sunk  within  them.  "God  has  gone  out  of  the 
way  of  his  common  providence,"  said  they,  "  in  a  remarkable 
and  almost  miraculous  manner,  to  incline  the  hearts  of  the 
French  to  give  up,  and  deliver  this  strong  city  into  our 
hands."  When  the  news  of  success  reached  Boston, 
the  bells  of  the  town  were  rung  merrily,  and  all  the  July  3. 
people  were  in  transports  of  joy.  The  strongest 
fortress  of  North  America  capitulated  to  an  army  of  undis- 
ciplined New  England  mechanics  and  farmers  and  fisher- 
men. It  was  the  greatest  success  achieved  by  England 
during  the  war. 

The  capture  of  Louisbuig  threatened  a  transfer  of       i746. 
the  scene  of  earnest  hostilities  to  America.     France 
VOL.  II.  38 


594  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLIIL 

planned  its  recovery  and  the  desolation  of  the  English 
colonies ;  but,  in  1746,  the  large  fleet  from  France,  under 
the  command  of  the  Duke  d'Anville,  wasted  by  storms  and 
shipwrecks  and  pestilential  disease,  enfeebled  by  the  sudden 
death   of  its  commander  and  the  delirium  and  suicide  of 

his  successor,  did  not  even  attack  Annapolis.  In  the 
1747.       next  year,  the  French  fleet,  with  troops  destined  for 

Canada  and  Nova  Scotia,  was  encountered  by  Anson 
and  Warren ;  and  all  its  intrepidity  could  not  save  it  from 
striking  its  colors.  The  American  colonies  suffered  only  on 
the   frontier.      Fort   Massachusetts   in   Williamstown,   the 

post  nearest  to  Crown  Point,  having  but  twenty-two 
Au^20.  "^^"  ^^^'  ^*^  garrison,  capitulated  to  a  large  body  of 

French  and  Indians.  In  the  wars  of  Queen  Anne, 
Deerfield  and  Haverhill  were  the  scenes  of  massacre.     It 

marks  the  progress  of  settlements  that  danger  was 
A^ru.     repelled  from  Concord  on  the  Merrimack,  and  from 

the  township  now  called  Charlestown  on  the  Con- 
necticut. 

Repairing  to  Louisburg,  Shirley,  with  Warren,  had  con- 
certed a  project  for  reducing  all  Canada;   and  the 

1746.  Duke  of  Newcastle  replied  to  their  proposals  by  di- 
recting preparations  for  the  conquest.     The  colonies 

north  of  Virginia  voted  to  raise  more  than  eight  thousand 

men  ;  but  no  fleet  arrived  from  England ;  and  the  French 

were   not   even    driven  from   their    posts   in   Nova 

1747.  Scotia.     The  summer  of  the  next  year  passed  in  that 
inactivity  which   attends  the  expectation  of  peace ; 

and  in  September  the  provincial  army,  by  direction  of 
the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  was  disbanded.  "  There  is  reason 
enough  for  doubting  whether  the  king,  if  he  had  the  power, 
would  wish  to  drive  the  French  from  their  possessions  in 

Canada."  Such  was  public  opinion  at  New  York, 
™;       in  1748,  as  preserved  for  us  by  the  Swedish  traveller, 

Peter  Kalm.  "  The  English  colonies  in  this  part  of 
the  world,"  he  continues,  "  have  increased  so  much  in 
wealth  and  population  that  they  will  vie  with  European 
England.  But,  to  maintain  the  commerce  and  the  power  of 
the  metropolis,  they  are  forbid  to  establish  new  manufac- 


1747.      WAR  BETWEEN  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  SPAIN.      595 

tures  which  might  compete  with  the  English  ;  they  may- 
dig  for  gold  and  silver  only  on  condition  of  shipping  them 
immediately  to  England ;  they  have,  with  the  exception  of 
a  few  fixed  places,  no  liberty  to  trade  to  any  parts  not 
belonging  to  the  English  dominions;  and  foreigners  are 
not  allowed  the  least  commerce  with  these  American  col- 
onies. And  there  are  many  similar  restrictions.  These 
oppressions  have  made  the  inhabitants  of  the  English  colo- 
nies less  tender  towards  their  mother  land.  This  coldness 
is  increased  by  the  many  foreigners  who  are  settled  apong 
them;  for  Dutch,  Germans,  and  French  are  here  blended 
with  English,  and  have  no  special  love  for  Old  England. 
Besides,  some  people  are  always  discontented,  and  love 
change;  and  exceeding  freedom  and  prosperity  nurse  an 
untamable  spirit.  I  have  been  told,  not  only  by  native 
Americans,  but  by  English  emigrants,  publicly,  that  within 
thirty  or  fifty  years  the  English  colonies  in  North  Amer- 
ica may  constitute  a  separate  state,  entirely  independent 
of  England.  But,  as  this  whole  country  is  towards  the  sea 
unguarded,  and  on  the  frontier  is  kept  uneasy  by  the 
French,  these  dangerous  neighbors  are  the  reason  why  the 
love  of  these  colonies  for  their  metropolis  does  not  utterly 
decline.  The  English  government  has  therefore  reason  to 
regard  the  French  in  North  America  as  the  chief  power 
that  urges  their  colonies  to  submission." 

The  Swede  heard  but  the  truth,  though  that  truth  lay 
concealed  from  British  statesmen.  Even  during  the  war, 
the  spirit  of  resistance  to  tyranny  was  kindled  into  a  fury 
at  Boston.  Sir  Charles  Knowles,  the  British  naval  com- 
mander, whom  Smollett  is  thought  to  have  described  justly 
as  "an  officer  without  resolution,  and  a  man  without  ve- 
racity," having  been  deserted  by  some  of  his  crew, 
while  lying  off  Nantasket,  early  one  morning,  sent  xov^n. 
his  boats  up  to  Boston,  and  impressed  seamen  from 
vessels,  mechanics  and  laborers  from  the  wharfs.  "  Such 
a  surprise  could  not  be  borne  here,"  wrote  Hutchinson, 
who  was  present;  and  he  assigns,  as  the  reason  of  impa- 
tience, that  "  the  people  had  not  been  used  to  it."  "  Men 
would  not  be  contented  with  fair  promises  from  the  gov- 


596  COLONIAL  HISTORY.  Chap.  XLIIL 

ernor ; "  "  the  seizure  and  restraint  of  the  commanders  and 
other  officers  who  were  in  town  was  insisted  upon,  as  the 
only  effectual  method  to  procure  the  release  of  the  inhab- 
itants aboard  the  ships."  And  the  mob  executed  what 
the  governor  declined.  At  last,  after  three  days  of  rage  and 
resentment,  through  the  mediation  of  the  house  of  repre- 
sentatives, order  was  restored.  The  officers  were  liberated 
from  their  irregular  imprisonment ;  and,  in  return,  most, 
if  not  all,  of  the  impressed  citizens  of  Boston  were  dis- 
missed from  the  English  fleet. 

The  alliance  of  Austria  with  Russia  hastened  negotiations 

for  the  pacification  of  Europe ;  and  a  congress  con- 
1748.       vened  at  Aix-la-Chapelle,  to  restore  tranquillity  to  the 

civilized  world.  Between  England  and  Spain,  and 
between  France  and  England,  after  eight  years  of  reciprocal 
annoyance,  after  an  immense  accumulation  of  national  debt, 
the  condition  of  peace  was  a  return  to  the  state  before  the 
war.  Nothing  was  gained.  Humanity  had  suffered,  without 
a  purpose  and  without  a  result.  In  the  colonial  world,  Ma- 
dras was  restored  for  Cape  Breton  ;  the  boundaries  between 
the  British  and  the  French  provinces  in  America  were  left 
unsettled,  neither  party  acknowledging  the  right  of  the 
other  to  the  basin  of  the  Penobscot  or  of  the  Ohio  ;  the  fron- 
tier of  Florida  was  not  traced.  Neither  did  Spain  relin- 
quish the  right  of  searching  English  vessels  suspected  of 
smuggling ;  and,  though  it  was  agreed  that  the  assiento 
treaty  should  continue  for  four  years  more,  the  right  was 
soon  abandoned,  under  a  new  convention,  for  an  inconsider- 
able pecuniary  indemnity.  The  principle  of  the  freedom  of 
the  seas  was  asserted  only  by  Frederic  II.  Holland,  remain- 
ing neutral  as  long  as  possible,  claimed,  under  the  treaty  of 
1674,  freedom  of  goods  for  her  free  ships;  but  England, 
disregarding  the  treaty,  captured  and  condemned  her  vessels. 
On  occasion  of  the  war  between  Sweden  and  Russia,  the  prin- 
ciple was  again  urged  by  the  Dutch,  and  likewise  rejected 
by  the  Swedes.  Even  Prussian  ships  were  seized;  but  the 
king  of  Prussia  indemnified  the  sufferers  by  reprisals  on 
English  property.  Of  higher  questions,  in  which  the  inter- 
ests of  civilization  were  involved,  not  one  was  adjusted. 


1748.      WAR  BETWEEN  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  SPAIN.      697 

To  the  balance  of  power,  sustained  by  standing  armies  of 

a  million  of  men,  the  statesmen  of  that  day  intrusted 

the  preservation  of  tranquillity,  and,  ignorant  of  the       1748. 

might  of  principles  to  mould  the  relations  of  states, 

saw  in  Austria  the  certain  ally  of  England,  in  France  the 

natural  ally  of  Prussia. 

Thus,  after  long  years  of  strife,  of  repose,  and  of  strife 
renewed,  England  and  France  solemnly  agreed  to  be  at 
peace.  The  treaties  of  Aix-la-Chapelle  had  been  negotiated 
by  the  ablest  statesmen  of  Europe,  in  the  forms  of  mon- 
archical diplomacy.  They  believed  themselves  the  arbiters 
of  mankind,  the  pacificators  of  the  world ;  reconstructing 
the  colonial  system  on  a  basis  which  should  endure  for  ages, 
and  confirming  the  peace  of  Europe  by  the  nice  adjustment 
of  material  forces.  At  the  very  time  of  the  congress  of  Aix- 
la-Chapelle,  the  woods  of  Virginia  sheltered  the  youthful 
George  Washington,  who  had  been  born  by  the  side  of 
the  Potomac,  beneath  the  roof  of  a  Westmoreland  planter,, 
and  whose  lot  almost  from  infancy  had  been  that  of  an 
orphan.  I^o  academy  had  welcomed  him  to  its  shades, 
no  college  crowned  him  with  its  honors :  to  read,  to  write, 
to  cipher,  these  had  been  his  degrees  in  knowledge.  And 
now,  at  sixteen  years  of  age,  in  quest  of  an  honest  main- 
tenance encountering  the  severest  toil ;  cheered  onward  by 
being  able  to  write  to  a  schoolboy  friend,  "  Dear  Richard, 
a  doubloon  is  my  constant  gain  every  day,  and  sometimes 
six  pistoles ; "  "  himself  his  own  cook,  having  no  spit 
but  a  forked  stick,  no  plate  but  a  large  chip ; "  roaming 
over  spurs  of  the  AUeghanies,  and  along  the  banks  of  the 
Shenandoah  ;  alive  to  nature,  and  sometimes  "  spending 
the  best  of  the  day  in  admiring  the  trees  and  richness  of 
the  land;"  among  skin-clad  savages  with  their  scalps  and 
rattles,  or  uncouth  emigrants  "  that  would  never  speak 
English ; "  rarely  sleeping  in  a  bed  ;  holding  a  bearskin  a 
splendid  couch  ;  glad  of  a  resting-place  for  the  night  upon 
a  little  hay,  straw,  or  fodder,  and  often  camping  in  the 
forests,  where  the  place  nearest  the  fire  was  a  happy  luxury, 
— this  stripling  surveyor  in  the  woods,  with  no  companion 
but  his  unlettered  associates,  and  no  implements  of  science 


598  COLONIAL  HISTOEY.  Chap.  XLIII. 

but  his  compass  and  chain,  contrasted  strangely  with  the 
imperial  magnificence  of  the  congress  of  Aix-la-Chapelle. 

And  yet  God  had  selected,  not  Kaunitz  nor  New- 
1748.       castle,  not  a  monarch  of  the  house  of  Hapsburg  nor 

of  Hanover,  but  the  Virginia  stripling,  to  give  an 
impulse  to  human  affairs;  and,  as  far  as  events  can  depend 
on  an  individual,  had  placed  the  rights  and  the  destinies  of 
countless  millions  in  the  keeping  of  the  widow's  son. 


END   OP   VOLUME    TWO. 


Cambridge:  Press  of  John  Wilson  &  Son. 


:M 


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